The Die is Cast
by Bruteaous
Summary: What do you do when the stage of your life has already been set without your approval? A Rei & Minako Story.
1. Yesterday was a Wrinkle on your Forehead

_**Alea Iacta Est…**_

_**Disclaimer: **_I do not own Sailor Moon or any of its characters (as much as I might like to ;).

_**Chapter One: Yesterday is a Wrinkle on your Forehead…**_

The always astute violet gaze was unfocused, dazed, and had been staring blankly up into the bright ceiling lights of the hospital examining room for the better part of the night before the doctor took the pains to mercifully close the unseeing eyes .

A woman lay in the bed, long dark hair wrapped up behind her and with skin as fragile as tissue paper, motionless and unaware of the world around her. The nurse who had come in to run the morning's tests had noticed an unusual pallor about their patient and a drop in her usual vital signs. The doctor had been called and he was in the process of examining his unconscious patient when her family (who had been notified as the law commanded) had arrived. A tall, dark haired man in his late twenties walked in, followed shortly, by a shorter old man with the vestiges of a few grey hairs still eking out a meager living on the top of his skull, and in his arms he was leading a dark haired girl by the shoulders who could not have been more than five or six years of age.

The man was swarthy, a slim professional in a tailored Armani business suit with long arms to match his equally long body. He tried to hold a commanding presence, but it was apparent that he had not fully grown into that role yet and was trying to make up for it by holding onto the false sense of complete authority.

As if to really support this, the young senator was impatient with the current situation. Stepping into the room, Ruyi Hino brushed blindly past his father-in-law and only daughter.

"Well doctor, how is she today?"

"Not well, I am afraid." The elder man shook his head, his pince-nez glasses sliding forward on his nose slightly as he breathed laboriously. Having been on duty most of the night, the poor man hadn't had much of a chance to rest before taking on rounds with his usual patients the next morning.

And Mrs. Hino had become one of his regulars over the past few years.

The twenty seven year old woman was under observation after yet another relapse.

Dr. Noboru Ikeda shook his head as sweat beaded his ancient brow while he double checked her vitals. Ever since the birth of her only child, a daughter, Amaterasu Hino's health had begun taking a frightfully fast spiral downward.

And the clean descent showed no sign of stopping anytime soon.

The monitors at the patient's bedside showed a sudden drop in blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, and also brain activity. It was only a matter of time now, but only Dr. Ikeda seemed to be the one to notice it right up front. As the doctor looked away from the monitors he saw his old friend, Jimmu Niesi and gave him a solemn nod as he watched him hold the small Hino girl by her shoulders.

_I am sorry, old friend, but there is not much more I can do_.

When Dr. Ikeda's eyes landed on those of the shaking little girl in Jimmu's arms, he knew for the first time, the overwhelming aftershock of real regret.

No child should have to lose their parents, leastwise a mother as yet her knew this girl would have to.

If Ruyi Hino was anything, he was not a patient man and outside of a Senate conference room the man had very little patience for any sort of useless deliberation. Restlessly, Ruyi ran a hand through his head of dark hair, the white gold of his wedding band standing out against the dark strands during the momentary movement.

Finally, his breath came out in a short, frustrated puff of air.

"Dr. Ikeda." It was a statement spoken in an icy undercurrent the senator's opponents would come to fear in later years. He was not the youngest to ever be elected a senator in Japan for nothing. "What is my wife's condition?"

The good doctor swallowed and looked from the fuming young politician to his friend Jimmu and the girl in the background. It was a race between what the young man could handle and what was best for the child. Finally, getting up his courage, he swallowed and nodded towards Jimmu instead.

"Jimmu, may I ask you to please take the girl out of the room for a moment?"

The old man seemed to start at that, but seeing the dire seriousness is the old doctor's eyes he knew it would be better for him to leave and it was not fair to Rei to stay. He knew she was too young to understand most of what they said, but children should never have to listen to the things they did and he was going to shield her from the hard truth for as long as he was able.

"Come along, Rei, let's go see if we can find a nice bouquet of flowers for your mother at the gift shop. You know how she loves looking after the flowers in our garden at home with your grandmother."

Jimmu tried to guide the little girl by her shoulders, but she stayed rooted to her spot watching her immobile mother, torn over whether to stay or leave.

But then came the final push…

The old man bent down and whispered into the girl's ear. "I'll let you pick out a candy bar for yourself and one for your father."

That did it.

For a six year old, it didn't take much else. The adults had asked her to leave the room before and before whenever she had come back her mother had always still been there and sometimes she was awake and smiling. Maybe she would be when Rei came back this time too.

Once Jimmu and Rei had disappeared around the corner and their footsteps could be heard tapering safely down the hall, Noboru Ikeda finally returned his attention to the senator.

"Well?"

"It does not look good, Senator. You should have all of her affairs settled by the end of this week."

The Senator's dark brown eyes widened considerably and he looked visibly shaken. "That soon?"

Ikeda swallowed, "I'm afraid so. Her body is giving out under the strain. I'd prepare yourself for the worst. By Sunday, at the latest, it should be over."

Ruyi stood there in a daze for a moment, staring blankly into the alabaster blue hospital blanket that covered the foot of his wife's bed. He was the eldest son of a former statesman, the infamous Mitsuyoshi Hino from Kagoshima.

He was a privileged son.

At age thirteen, Ruyi had the highest class average in his grades, at eighteen he was voted the most popular boy in his high school class. At twenty he had entered the political scene and at twenty-five he had been the youngest senator to ever be elected into office. Then at twenty-three he had met and married Amaterasu Nisei and not a year later then had a daughter and a comfortable married life. Now he was on the fast tract to becoming the governor of Tokyo and all before he was thirty.

Ruyi would be the first to admit that he had a gifted life. Everything he had ever planned, everything he had worked for had worked itself out in his favor.

Until now.

Takashi Hino, or Ruyi, as he preferred to be called, was not a man to take losing gracefully and this matter would be no different. But this was not a career loss, this was his wife, it was his Amaterasu…his wife!! No one else's. His. It was not a thing he had planned on.

"I'm sorry, son."

The doctor's sympathetic words lulled Ruyi out of his stupor, but they did not quell the burning of his smoldering pride nor the seductive ardor of his reawakening ambition. And even as Ikeda's hand came down heavily on his shoulder, he shook it off and turned towards the door, his usual swagger returning.

"Tell my father-in-law I am going back to my Hotel for the evening and will be flying out in the morning for the Windsor in Toyako for a conference. I'll send my driver back to pick them up this afternoon if they would like. Other than that I have business to attend to that will hold me over until the end of the month." He sniffed at his nose which he suddenly realized had begun to run and his eyes that were wet and sticky. "Will there be anything else doctor?"

Ikeda straightened up and swallowed, eyeing the young man's back empathetically. "No, that's all for now. I will keep you updated of her condition throughout the week."

Ruyi swiped at his eyes and stared straight ahead, only blinking once. "Don't bother, my secretary will have my phone. Tell Jimmu, he'll be expected to take care of my daughter until I return. Good day, Dr. Ikeda."

And with that Senator Hino was gone and the old doctor was left with nothing more, but the monotone beeps of the heart monitor.

----

Rei had decided she liked the color red, a lot, which was why she and grandpa had picked out a thick bouquet of a dozen red roses for her mother's bedside table. Her mother liked red too, if she remembered correctly and Rei was sure she would like them.

Waiting in the line at the gift shop on the hospital's main floor, Rei held the plastic vase of flowers, very proud of her choice. An electric grin was spread all over her face as she struggled forward with the semi heavy burden behind her grandfather as the line moved again.

Taking a precarious step against gravity, Rei leaned forward and thrust her nose into the bundle of red blossoms to get a better whiff of the fresh, clean scent. However, no one rose is without its peril and nor were these.

Rei let out a pitiful little cry as the pointed edge of one thorn one the side of a rose snagged at the skin on the tip of her nose and cut the surface, drawing a few drops of blood to drip down onto the clear plastic of the vase.

Almost immediately, the vase of roses crashed into the ground and the dozen roses and their water spilled all over the carpeted floor. The attention of the entire line of customers as well as that of the cashier and everyone else in the room was now centered on the soundly sniveling little girl.

"Rei! What happened?" Her grandfather knelt down beside her, seeing the blood covering the hand she was holding over her injured nose.

Rei lifted a finger from her other hand and pointed at the roses while mumbling some unintelligible explanation.

"What's the problem here, sir?"

A man in a uniform came up to them and grandpa waved him off. "Shoo you, she wasn't causing any trouble, she just cut her nose."

"Let me guess." The Uniformed man took another imposing step forward. "On something she broke and that you will have to pay to replace, eh?"

Grandpa indignant now that Rei's cries had died down to tiny whimpers as the cut was beginning to stop bleeding, stood up to his full 5'5" and held up the emptied vase for all to see, the clear plastic exterior still very much intact.

"Please!" Grandpa shouted at the top of his mortified lungs, "It's plastic!"

As the miniature squabble took place and a shop employ rushed over to make sure the situation did not turn into an upscale fight, a little blonde girl approached Rei's side with a handkerchief.

She nudged at her and Rei looked up at her, surprised all the more at the lack of personal space afforded between the two. Rei stumbled a step backward in shock and the little blond covered her mouth with her hand and giggled at her antics.

When her giggles had finally died down, the blonde reached forward with the yellow handkerchief and dangled it in front of Rei.

"Here." She said with a small, carefree smile with a few giggles still hidden yet behind it. "Well, what are you waiting for? Take it."

Rei's watery eyes narrowed. She was not and had never been a people person, but there was something about this girl. Perhaps it was the smile in those blue eyes or just the fact that she had been bold enough to approach her. Whatever it was, Rei found herself reaching out for the handkerchief without much resistance.

"There now, was that so bad?" The girl asked after Rei had wiped the last of the blood from her nose. Without being asked to, the little girl moved suddenly closer and Rei felt an uncomfortable heat rush up her cheeks at having her personal space violated in such a manner again.

"What are you doing?" Rei asked as the girl batted her eyes innocently at her.

"Introducing myself." The blonde gave a wink and advanced forward one more inch placing a kiss on the cheek of a very surprised Rei. "My name is-"

"That's it! This is loony, it was just a vase of cotton picking roses!!"

Grandpa had apparently had it with the man in uniform across from him and vice versa.

"I am sorry sir, but you are causing a scene." The shop employee who had intervened to try and keep their disagreement at a healthy level had put his hands on his hips and was now nodding towards the door. "If this continues I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave."

Grandpa swallowed his next retort, remembering himself and he bowed to both men before rushing over and taking Rei by the hand. When he spoke, however, his words were uncharacteristically terse as he rushed her along out of the store.

"We're leaving, Rei, we'll find flowers for your mother somewhere else."

Rei tried to protest, but no words came out. She looked back once, but the little blonde girl was gone. Silently, Rei allowed herself to be pulled down the hospital corridor towards the lobby, her hand still clutching the yellow handkerchief.

----

Grandpa had ended up leading Rei a little ways down the street to the flower shop of yet another old friend of his who he deemed more trust worthy than the hospital staff. It had ended up being a long enough stay for Rei to reevaluate her taste in flowers and in the end, she and  
Grandpa had left with a plastic vase of peace roses.

Rei's pride in their choice showed in the reawakened grin plastered all over the little girl's face.

Only once did her brow furrow and she turned to look up at her grandfather who, was mercifully, carrying the vase this time. "Do you think mama will really like the flowers we bought for her, Grandpa?"

Grandpa looked down at her, a smile on his face. "I am sure she will. Why wouldn't she when we're her two most favorite people in the world?"

Rei giggled at the little secret they kept between the three of them. "I wonder what papa would say if we told him our secret."

"Probably 'I knew it'." Grandpa laughed down at her.

It was a fairly sunny afternoon outside. The sky over Tokyo was a clear blue with very few visible clouds and the temperature was at its usual spring warmth. There was a breeze that was cool enough to balance everything out to form a comfortable atmosphere around the two bystanders slowly making their way back towards the hospital.

"Grandma would probably say the same thing." Rei said. "Though, she would probably try to bribe mama with some sort of chocolate dessert to change her mind. You know how mama loves chocolate."

They walked in companionable silence back into the hospital. After a while, Jimmu began humming along to a little tune, trying to get his granddaughter to follow, but for all of her quickly rising talents (of which singing was one); Rei was exceedingly shy. So she did not hum with him, but she could not keep the smile off of her face that went with the story she knew accompanied the folktale's melody.

As the two entered the elevator, a thought popped into Rei's head.

"Grandpa?"

"Hm?"

"Do you think papa will be jealous that we didn't bring him back any flowers?" Rei asked staring up at her grandfather suddenly serious. "Maybe we should go back and buy him a bouquet too so papa isn't lonely without his own flowers."

"I promise, Rei, he won't be jealous." The old man reassured her and when her attention was turned away from him he finished with a choice few words under his breath that showed best just how well he thought of his son-in-law, "And if he is then the man has more nerve than I have already judged him for, the cheap suit."

They arrived on her mother's floor in a short amount of time, considering how quickly hospital elevators go. As soon as the shiny metal doors opened, Rei burst out off running down the hall like a bullet out of the barrel of a gun leaving the old man struggling to keep up.

"Rei! Rei, slow down would ya! I'm not a young man anymore!"

The little girl kept up a break neck pace down the corridor, so much so that when she reached the doorway to her mother's room, she almost missed it. But for what it was worth, she didn't miss much.

Rei stood in the center of a doorway to an empty hospital bed and an empty room.

Slowly, she back pedaled and took a second look at the number on the wall. 607. It was her mother's room number all right, but her mother just wasn't there.

"Grandpa! Grandpa come quick!"

Grandpa, coming to a halting stop near his granddaughter, doubled over the vase of flowers in his hands, breathing heavily after the high speed chase from the elevator.

"Really, Rei, I thought we taught you to have more respect of your elders than that."

The six year old stood tall and put her hands on her hips in a very authoritarian pose. "Grandpa we have more important things to worry about, someone stole mama!"

"What?!"

The old man shot up and stuck his head into the room and low and behold the sheets and covers on her bed were folded neatly, with no sign that his daughter had ever slept in them. Instantly, his spirits fell. They wouldn't have moved her without notifying him first, they would have waited. The only reason they would have taken her anywhere would have been if something had happened and since there had not been a nurse waiting to inform him or her change in condition, he knew it was nothing good.

Dr. Ikeda was just shutting a door another patient's room when he caught sight of Jimmu and his young granddaughter. He sighed and wiped the sweat his brow with his handkerchief. This was not going to be easy.

Steeling his resolve, the good doctor advanced down the hall towards the two.

"Jimmu." Ikeda addressed him gravely.

"Noboru, where is my daughter?"

Dr. Ikeda took a deep breath, not wanting to have to be the one to break the news to him.

"Jimmu, after your son-in-law left….she took a turn for the worst. I am sorry, old friend. There was nothing more we could do for her."

The sound of the vase full of flowers smashing into the floor echoed down the hospital corridor for all to hear and with it went all of Rei's childish hopes and dreams that her mother would ever come home again.

* * *

"Thus bad begins and worse remains behind."

-From William Shakespeare's _Hamlet_-

A/N: Hope everyone liked it. R & R!


	2. A Feeling

_**Chapter Two: A Feeling**_

_Ten years later…_

Wakefulness came to Minako abruptly as her body rolled onto the carpeted floor on the other side of her bed with a rude thud. It was a common occurrence for her, waking up by falling out of her bed and it happened almost every morning like clockwork.

Struggling out of her sheets, she groaned as she fought against opening her eyes to the bright sunshine streaming through the bay windows off of her balcony.

Morning seemed to come earlier every day….too damn early in Mina's opinion. Why couldn't the sun start to rise around noonish instead? That would work out better.

Well, she thought as she rolled over onto her back and sighed, at least it's not a school day.

Minako highly doubted she would be able to take it if it was….or at least she wouldn't have been while she had been attending the other school. Thank God she had moved on to greener pastures or was about to. Taking a deep breath, the lanky blonde slowly rose and disentangled herself completely from the confining blankets still wrapped around her feet.

Today was a new day, a gift, she reminded herself, and she intended to live it as one.

The Aino's townhouse was situated in the center of Tokyo with the strategic location designed to help the young singer with her career, not that she needed it right now. With the introduction of her first full feature album, Imitation, her music sales had grossed around three hundred million in profits during its first week on the shelves.

A first in Tokyo music history for a début album.

Almost over night, Mina had become one of the most popular singing idols the world had ever known. However, the brightest of lights never came without its shadow.

On the negative side of things, with her quick rise to fame, the location of her home in the thick of a city of millions also put Minako at the center of a storm of press coverage and the ever constant evasion of privacy that came with it.

And to top it all off, the Ainos themselves were almost never at home.

Minako's father, Shoichi, was a wealthy businessman who traveled all of the time and was staying in a new city almost every night. Foreign hotels had become his home away from home and aside from the odd phone call, Minako hardly ever heard from her him. It was not that their relationship with one another was a bad one, they were both just too busy, really, to keep in close contact like most fathers and daughters did.

Minako's mother, Kazumi, was a world famous fashion designer who owned her own designer lines in Europe and the Americas and she spent a great deal of her time abroad promoting their interests.

For both of Minako's parents, their children were their careers, their family was their work and they were a complete success when it came to nurturing them. However, in the process they forgot one little thing:

They had forgotten about her.

Minako shelved the somber thought as she walked into her closet, a world of its own, to change for the day. She knew her parents loved her. That wasn't the issue.

Whenever they were around the Ainos were an extremely affectionate family. They always made it a point to plan luxurious outings with their daughter whenever they came back to town and seemed to take an active interest in how Mina's life was progressing at length, always supportive, always encouraging of the career she was actively pursuing. Did it matter if these visits were only once or twice a year? It shouldn't have, but sometimes it did.

Sometimes Minako couldn't help dreaming that she could be a girl like every other girl her age in Tokyo with parents who fixed breakfast for her every morning and would drive her to school. It wasn't the same to have nannies and chauffeurs who did the same thing.

The only thing Mina didn't seem to envy the others for were their friends. When she was a girl Mina had been a very social person, a short scrawny thing that her parents could never get to shut up when they went out or to calm down for a business meeting. Everywhere she went, she had to say hi to perfect strangers on the sidewalk and scare the living daylights out of them with her high pitched enthusiasm. But those days were far behind her.

Minako Aino wasn't a child anymore. She had changed a lot since those days and for good reason.

Tossing on a knee length skirt and a plain black t-shirt with a plain white vest and high heels, Minako walked out of her closet and back into her bedroom. She was just in the process of locating her cell phone in the calculated mess of the room when a knock came for her at the door.

It was Michelle, one of her aunt's English maids. The door opened a crack and the young English woman stuck her head in with a perky smile on her face.

"Hello miss, it's time."

Finally finding the offending phone in a discarded pile of clothing, Minako smirked at her ironically, "You do realize that most girls don't have maids who tell them when they have to be up and ready at every moment of their schedule don't you?"

"Yes miss, but you are Miss Aino and your aunt, Ms. Fusako Aino, very much insists." Michelle was one of the friendliest members of the house staff Minako's parents had ever bothered to hire and Minako had to say she rather liked having her around. It sort of made up for not having another sibling close to her own age.

Minako knew what that meant. He aunt was anything but flexible when it came to their scheduled hours together. It was after all why her father had asked her to move in with his only daughter, to look after her and make sure she was always on the ball.

"I guess I don't have any other choice then." Minako threw her a mischievous smile as she took off her vest and draped it across her shoulder to carry it casually there.

"Thanks for being understanding, miss, you know how your aunt can be." Michelle matched her smile and opened the door for her. "Now let's get down there, shall we?"

The dining room that they always took breakfast in, out of the many in the house, had a large balcony that spanned the length of a wall of windows. As always, her aunt was sitting at the end of the long mahogany table when she got there, nursing a steaming cup of green tea.

"Good morning, Minako."

Minako entered through the sliding doors on the other side of the breakfast bar, closing them behind her as Michelle giggled as she rolled her eyes, the expression hidden from her aunt while her back was turned. With Michelle gone, Minako turned towards Fusako Aino with a radiant smile on her face.

"Good morning, Aunt."

"My, my, Minako, you are in a good mood today." Fusako pushed a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear to go along with the rest tied behind her in a long pony tail, her blue eyes scrutinizing her niece over the brim of her cup as she sipped at her tea contentedly. "Who is he?"

Minako's radiant smile took a new birth in the form of yet another mischievous smirk as her aunt's already rigid posture stiffened and she crossed her legs beneath the table.

"Oh, you know, one of those riff-raffs out spray painting walls and making hussies out of us decent young ladies and all."

Her aunt rolled her eyes and groaned at her usual theatrics, but said nothing.

"In fact, you're going to like this even better." Minako went on as she crossed around the bar and took her seat at the far other end of the table, tossing her vest across the back of her chair before she sit down. "I met him in the alley way behind the studio where I convinced him to spray paint my name in pretty yellows and reds against the studio wall. It was quite a wonderful signature, really, I couldn't have done better myself."

"Minako." There was a warning in her aunt's voice that Minako had grown accustomed to over the years.

Minako just leaned forward on her elbows and batted her eyes at Fusako innocently. "Yes?"

"Why must you constantly make up lies just to bother me?" Draining her cup of tea, Fusako gestured to one of the waiting butlers and a tray carrying her usual bowl of miso soup and another of rice which were immediately set in front of her while the empty tea cup was quickly whisked away. "Honestly, I can see why your parents stay away so much. You embarrass them."

Minako blinked, but said nothing as a bowl of miso and one of rice were also set in front of her. Instead of eating it though her stomach she had been quietly rumbling since she had woke up, she just stared down at the chunks of white paste and thin slices of kombu bobbing up in down in the carmel colored dashi stock.

Taking a first bite of miso and bending to wipe the broth from her chin with her napkin, Fusako decided to break the awkward silence that had formed between them. "In fact,Shoichi called this morning."

Minako's blue eyes snapped up from the soup. "Daddy did?"

"Yes, but you were still in bed and I didn't want to disturb you." Fusako reached to take a bite of rice and looked back at her, nonchalantly. "I know how you need your beauty rest."

The undertone to her aunt's voice tipped Minako off to her mood that had become a frequent with her during their little morning bonding moments Apparently, one year spent in this house with her unruly niece was beginning to wear on Fusako's patience.

She and Minako had never been close anyway.

A knock came from outside the room and Jerome, her father's town driver entered through the Meji era doors behind Fusako 's chair and bowed politely toward the two.

"Excuse me, ladies, but it is time for your recording session at the studio, Miss Minako."

Minako stood and put her vest on, but before she could reach the door, her aunt called to her.

Watching her intently, Fusako looked genuinely concerned for her niece for the first time in a year. "You really should eat something before you go."

Minako shot a disgusted look back at her untouched miso and rice. "I'm not hungry. Let's go, Jerome."

Fusako watched them leave. Listening to the doors closing behind her, she stood up and smoothed out the skirt of her Valentino business suit in her walk towards the wall of windows which over looked the busy city below, her favorite breakfast foods suddenly forgotten about as she watched the early morning light creep over the skyline.

----

"C'est la vie. Everything you've taught me, bonbons and silk, cherry blossoms and wine, Romeo and Juliet, This is the life, oh yeah, this is the life…"

Ujio Kobun sat on the other side of the recording wall, his fingers rhythmically tapping the plastic exterior of the huge headphones covering his ears as Minako's voice flooded through the sound system. Later they would add the synthesized melody Satsuki had composed for them along with the lyrics Nobuko had written for them and voila, they had another Minako Aino sell out hit.

Leaning back in his seat, Ujio watched as Tetsu readjusted some of the levers on the sound mixer board beside him as Minako's voice hit a couple of skillfully crafted high notes. Readjusting the balance again Tetsu sat back in his chair as the makeshift beat of the song picked up and the chorus part of the lyrics took over again.

Ujio smiled as Tetsu's eyes went a little wide and shot him the look a new father might have after seeing his first born son through the nursery window at the hospital for the first time as the other man shook his head with a grin.

Yeah, that was right, his girl had talent.

Ujio may have only been her manager, but he was the first one to admit it. The kid could sing and it was her voice that teenagers worldwide were clamoring to hear with the release of her second album, Venus, scheduled to hit the shelves in one month's time.

Just looking at the girl, he knew her voice wasn't the only appeal she had. Her looks seemed to surpass the idol standard and put her on the worldwide A list with stars such as Rika Katsumo, Adele, and Miley Cyrus. But it was in her native country where she topped the charts, where she was the number one girl everyone wanted to be like, the girl everyone wanted to look like, the life everyone wanted to have.

Ujio shook his head. Even with all of her talents, he did not envy Minako's life.

He much preferred his hectic, but thankfully comparably quiet life in Adachi with his wife and daughter. He knew the allure the heart of Tokyo had to people, but a life there wasn't all it was cracked up to be. At least he could take the train home every night without a barrel of photographers following him around taking pictures of every movement he made as he walked from the station to his house by the Sumida River.

He was a lot more fortunate than she was in that way. Very few people didn't know her whereabouts at any given time of day. That was why she had to be driven everywhere, for her own protection.

The last note hit a variable of dynamics before it slowly faded off and Tetsu stopped the recorder.

"Cut." He called removing his headphones also and stretching. It had been a long day. They might as well call it a wrap. They didn't want to damage the girl's voice.

The door to the small recording room opened and Minako stuck her head in.

"How was it?" She asked, unable to wipe the excited smile off of her face, the same smile which showed just how much she loved what she did each and everyday.

"Brilliant." Tetsu gave her the thumbs up.

" You did good, kid." Ujio couldn't help conceding to that contagious impish excitement the girl radiated after every session. "We're done for the day. You're free to go whenever you want to."

A mischievous smirk came over Minako's features as she came further into the room and placed her hands on her hips. "Now, Ujio, when do I ever want to leave this place?"

His brow knit together as he thought about that a while. "Good point. In that case get outta here, kid. We don't want you hanging around forever, you cramp our style."

"Hmp, as if you have any."

As the door shut behind her, she could just hear the beginning of her manager's indignant response before the sound of the door slamming to the soundproof booth cut it off and Minako had to laugh.

It was almost the perfect end to the perfect day…almost.

----

As she walked back down the hall towards her dressing room, Minako leaned against the wall slightly, the first wave of exhaustion just beginning to hit her as the adrenaline quickly fizzled out of her system.

Stopping, she leaned her arms against the wall, letting her full weight rest there as she attempted to steady her breathing and a cramping in her chest began. As the first wave of nausea hit her, Minako closed her eyes and cursed under her breath. This sometimes happened when she went a whole day of work without really eating or drinking anything.

She would get sick again.

Not as ill as she used to be, but still her immune system wasn't impervious to illness, especially when she neglected taking care of herself like this. Her doctor wouldn't be at all happy I he knew what she was doing.

The poor man worried about her too much. He was going to give himself an ulcer. He needed to take vacation. Now there would be a sight, a fifty seven year old man with gout learning how to windsurf.

Suddenly, Minako found herself very glad she lived in Tokyo and not in some tropical paradise were such sights were very frequent occurrences. She'd feel horrible for laughing at the poor dears.

Slowly, the purple carpet beneath her feet began to blur. No! She wasn't going to give in this time.

But it wasn't up to her anymore.

The dully carpeted floor became a quickly moving haze just as the world began to spin and everything finally went black.

* * *

"We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?"

-David Foster Wallace-

(1962 – 2008)


	3. Sometimes Goodbye is a Second Chance

_**Chapter Three: Sometimes Goodbye is a Second Chance**_

Was there a reason that anyone was born? Was there a purpose to just one life?

They had buried her mother this afternoon. Rei had watched as they had lowered the coffin into the ground. Her grandfather had not been part of the services, in a religious way, anyway. Amatersau Hino had taken to the Catholic faith while attending art school in Kyoto and so Jimmu had decided to have the funeral service presided over the way he knew his daughter would have wanted it to be.

By a catholic priest not a Shinto one like him.

They had ridden to the cemetery in a car following the long black car that carried the casket. It had been only Rei and her grandparents in the backseat. Her father had, as was becoming a frequent reoccurring theme, been detained by matters of state that were too important for him to be pulled away from, not even for his own wife's funeral.

Even grandpa had been surprised. Rei could tell. As bad as her papa could be sometimes, grandpa had not expected him not to show for the funeral and it was eating at him inside. She could tell by the way his jaw was set in a stern manner that was so unlike him and also by how grandma was holding his hand tenderly in both of hers. It was a rainy day and no one was smiling, not even the unknowing people on the sidewalk.

Rei had never felt this way before. Never before had the air in her chest felt so stale, nor had the ability to breathe felt so forced, nor the ability to keep her eyes open sting so much. Everything inside of her was drawn, zipped up tight and numb.

There was everything and nothing and all of it in between all bearing down on her, threatening to explode from beneath the tightening in her chest and Rei didn't know what to do. Why could no one tell her what to do? Why couldn't anyone help her? Where was her mama? The one who was supposed to hold her when she was scared and didn't know what to do? Why wasn't she here? Why couldn't she be here?

Why? Why?!

Rei wiped her runny nose on her sleeve, but didn't let her tears fall. However, her resolution failed as her grandmother tenderly squeezed her shoulder and the floodgates opened.

It just wasn't fair.

The hearse pulled into the cemetery and so too did a few cars carrying the other mourners. Rei's grandpa, being the elder of the group, got out of the car first and then came Rei's grandmother and then Rei herself. The casket was pulled slowly out from the back of the hearse and was carried to the plot by pallbearers on either side. The priest had been waiting for everyone and was solemnly standing near the grave when the polished oak casket was set over the hole, prayer book in hand.

There was no headstone yet, that came later Rei's grandmother had told her. All there was today was a large rectangular hole carved into the ground and covered with a black tent for the family members and priest to stand under.

Though her father had declined to show at the funeral, both of his parents were present. Being a high profile family, it was probably good for their image that they had done so, Jimmu had told her; because on their own the Hinos were not a caring group of people.

And even though at that young age Rei had the feeling that her grandfather's opinion towards his in-laws was a little biased, she had to admit that her father's parents didn't appear to be happy people.

The family patriarch, Mitsuyoshi Hino, stood tall and austere, the gray of his hair and the wrinkles around his eyes were the only things distinguishing him from his youngest son as he wore the same type of fitted Armani suits and hereditary grim expression that Rei's father often did. His wife, Ikko, wore a drab grey dress with an overbearing hat that shaded her face with a long black veil so that Rei couldn't tell whether she had maintained her legendary beauty or lost it to age.

There were quite a few mourners present, most of them friends of the family and very few of them actual family members themselves on either side.

Rei's aunts on either side hadn't decided to show. Her father's sister, Taka, hadn't seen Rei since her birth and the girl didn't miss her absence that much, but her mother's sister, Sanae, had been a common presence in Rei's life for as long as she could remember and it felt weird not having her around; but since she had married and moved out into the countryside the family was seeing less and less of her as time went by.

The opening prayers were said by the priest as everyone consolidated around the awning where the coffin had been placed over the hole. A breast of red and white roses shrouded the top of the black casket in color.

As the family gathered beneath the awning, the Hinos were invited by the priest, out of civility, to sit next to Rei and her grandparents. Consciously, Rei huddled closer to her grandmother, frightened and upset. Ikko seemed almost to accept the proposal, but Mitsuyoshi shook his head sternly and that was the end of it. Rei was glad she wouldn't have to be any closer to those miserable people than she had to be.

The Hinos might genetically be her grandparents, but they were not her family.

The priest cleared his throat and the burial ceremony began, "We are gathered here to lay to rest a young woman who has very suddenly been taken from us." Here the old man paused for slightly dramatic effect before continuing, "As we remember Amatersau Hino we recall her compassion, her kindness, her generosity in spirit, all things that will light her way into the next life as well as it did for her through her life here on Earth…."

Why?

That one word hung unanswered in the air over Rei's head throughout the whole service. Rei didn't really listen the priest's words as he carried on and on, but she heard them. The man said things about God and her mother in general and it was clear than he had never known her personally while she had been alive.

Following the burial, her grandparents had taken her home. It was a very solemn quiet house that afternoon. Dinner was bland and ordinary with neither adult or child uttering more than a few words at the dinner table. Jimmu had retired early. Uzume came to check on him only once a short time later and saw him cradling an only family photo of the two of them and their three children. This was the second child they had lost after their son Yoske had been killed by a reckless driver on a street corner and the building losses had taken its toll on both of them, especially her fun loving husband.

Though Uzume worried for him, she knew the best thing she could do for him right now was to leave him to his thoughts and when he needed her, she would be there.

When Rei's grandmother had come to tuck her into bed that night she discovered the little girl had already bundled herself up comfortably beneath the covers with her back to the door and her head curved in towards her knees beneath the blankets.

After her initial surprise had worn off, Uzume had leaned against the door frame and watched Rei sleep for a bit, amazed that she had gotten herself ready for bed on her own and was now asleep without any assistance from her. Unlike other girls of her own age, Rei was proving stubbornly independent.

And that worried Uzume…a lot.

Rei had always been stubborn on her own, she was her mother's daughter after all, but never before had she shown this sort of independence. She loved to be tucked in at night. Every evening, she would rush through the upstairs corridors after her bath and dress in her pajamas before picking out a story book for her grandmother to read to her from and jumping into bed to wait for her to come upstairs. Uzume smiled at the thought. Some nights when she would start folding the clean towels that had just been brought in instead of going right upstairs to tuck Rei in, the little girl would come scampering down the steps, book in hand, tapping her foot impatiently at the foot of the stairs until Uzume joined her.

But that was not this little girl.

This little girl had gotten ready for bed and fallen asleep without the help of her grandmother. She hadn't even said goodnight to either one of her grandparents beforehand.

Uzume sighed. This was not her Rei. This was a stranger sleeping in her bed and inhabiting in her body without any of the characteristics of the host they had replaced. Where was her kind, warm hearted granddaughter?

The same little girl who not a week earlier had brought a dying cricket into the temple and had proceeded to pray for it's life, which was a very cute sight Uzume had to admit. The same little girl who traipsed curiously through the woods surrounding the temple, exploring the plot of trees as though it were a vast unknown land where monsters lived and strange creatures roamed.

Where was that girl now?

Perhaps she was overreacting, but Uzume was sure that this small thing was the first step in a long list of changes taking place in her granddaughter. And she was right. Though she would only live to see half of them play out before her, Uzume Nisei had been right from the very beginning.

As her grandmother left her room, a quietly awake Rei let the last few tears she had been holding back slide sideways down her cheeks and drop onto her pillow. Silently, she cried unnoticed for the next few hours until finally she fell into a fitful sleep.

Even while at rest, Rei uttered one simple word from time to time:

Mommy….

-----

_Ten Years Later…_

A locker door slamming in the middle of a busy hallway got a few people's undivided attention, but not many as Rei Hino, holding all of her books firmly against her chest with one arm, gave the offending door a dirty look.

She turned around, but a few curious onlookers still remained.

"What is so damn interesting?!" She lashed out, rounding on them.

The group of kids startled and tried to make nervous conversation as they very quickly retreated from Rei and her legendary ire. The fiery teenager was known for her short temper throughout the halls of the TA Girls School and that was a reputation that was unlikely to change anytime soon.

That was her, the person she had become, Rei Hino: the wealthy senator's daughter, beautiful, moody, antisocial, and brooding. A person people longed to get closer too and yet shied away from, someone labeled as weird.

Untouchable…

That was not an exaggeration. Rei Hino didn't like to be touched in any way, physically or emotionally and she let people know it. When she had been a child in elementary school Rei had been antisocial then too, but at least she had been more approachable in those days. Kids hadn't been afraid of her when she was younger, not like they were now.

But a lot had happened since then…a lot had changed.

Another group of students passed her in the hallway. Some gave her secretly appraising looks while the others only chatted on in loud whispers not caring whether she heard them or not. When they were gone and the hall was nearly empty again save for a few stragglers, Rei looked at her distorted reflection in the grey glossed paint of her locker door.

A discolored imitation of her amethyst eyes stared back at her without mercy. There was no bullshit in that look. The refracted likeness with its hard stare and loathing expression seemed more corporeal than she was.

Rei was brought out of her own musings by the sound of high pitched giggling coming from behind her. Turning, she caught sight of two younger girls who, having been discovered by her, were scurrying down the hall still giggling, one looking back at her only once before rounding the corner.

What was so funny? Rei didn't know. She had just been standing by her locker thinking though, she had to confess that probably looked sort of weird.

For a single moment, Rei caught the focus of the dull reflection of her purple gaze in her locker door and held the contact as though it were an entirely other person she were dealing with than just herself.

Amethyst eyes that looked on forever and smiled along with the tender face that always followed her when she was a child playing in the woods…her mother's eyes.

Eyes that she would never see again, only in her memories.

With a frustrated sigh to herself, Rei swept her free hand through her bangs and marched off towards her first class of the day.

-----

_Eyes of dark amethyst that stared into her soul…_

"_Well, what are you waiting for? Take it."_

_Those same eyes narrowed, but they did not question her farther. Instead they blinked at her as two small hands met unexpectedly on the edge of a yellow handkerchief…_

"Miss Aino?" A voice interrupted the reoccurring dream that always seemed to end abruptly anyway for some reason, "Miss Aino, do you know where you are?"

Minako opened her eyes and immediately cringed at the bright intensity of the overhead ceiling lights. She had to be in a hospital. There was no place else in the world which had more offensive lighting. When her eyes had readjusted, Mina recognized the concerned man hovering beside her as Rene Kuribayashi, her personal doctor for the last ten years.

She tried to speak, but her throat was too dry and she had to swallow first before trying again.

"Why am I here?" She softly got out. Her voice sounded weak, foreign almost, even to her.

"Mr. Kobun found you passed out in the hall at the studio and brought you in."

Minako tried to sit up, but when discomfort erupted in her back and neck, she thought better of it and laid back down. Taking in some more of her surroundings, she noticed that the line for an IV drip had been taped to the back of her hand and its offensive looking bag of clear liquid hung on a rack beside the bed where there were also several monitors set up which were keeping track of her heart rate and blood pressure.

There was little question as to why she was here. It had happened again. Minako just prayed it wouldn't be as bad as the last time.

"So, is it back?"

Kuribayashi took a deep breath and then continued, "We don't know for sure. We've begun running some tests. I would like to recommend that you have a CT scan and a-"

"MRI, I know the drill." Minako interrupted him, rolling her eyes while at the same time trying to conceal the tears forming behind them.

She had thought she would have been beyond them by now, but there was no way a person could prepare themselves to hear that an illness that they had been struggling with for almost their entire lives had come back after two years in remission.

No way to soften the blow.

"I've taken the liberty of contacting your family. Your aunt assured me that she would be able to contact your parents, but so far she hasn't had any luck." The man smiled what he hoped to be a supporting smile, but halfway through he realized it wasn't doing any good and the expression fell into a sheepish frown.

Minako had to swallow again, her throat getting dryer by the minute. "Where is she, my aunt?"

Again, Kuribayashi tried to smile, but the attempted gesture failed as soon as he began to speak, "She has been….unavoidably detained."

Minako turned to look out the window next to her bed and nodded her head solemnly. She knew what that line meant.

Fusako Aino was a great many things, but a workaholic was not one of them. Hers was a family with money. It had catered to all of her whims including paying for an expensive education in decorating from Caesar's Palace with which she had built her own decorating firm, but after her initial success, Fusako did very little of the work herself. Only for her biggest clients did she dare set foot in the studio in her office building.

She wasn't busy, with work at least…

Under the passive visage Minako was putting up a swell of sudden anger was growing.

Honestly, with as much as that woman chided her on her own relationships, she didn't do anything to correct her own promiscuity though Minako was sure her aunt thought she had no knowledge of the other side of the seemingly straight laced life that she lead. What a hypocrite.

Minako went to swallow again, but found that her throat was already scratchy and dry with no improvement from the last time she had done it. She was about to reach behind her for the buzzer to call a nurse, but before she could, Kuribayashi was at her side with a plastic cup full of ice water and a straw.

Minako smiled at the kindly old man in thanks before taking the cup from him and taking a deep swig from the straw. After she had taken several of the kind, she set the nearly empty cup down on the bedside tray.

Leaning back to look at the doctor who, after getting the water for her, had began studying the monitors with her heart rate and blood pressure displayed on them, Minako waited for an entire minute before asking the question that had been nagging at her since she had woken up.

"Could this be nothing?" The old doctor turned to her though her voice was not much higher than a glorified whisper, "Could we just be overreacting?"

The neurologist sat back on his heels and considered that a moment. Rene Kuribayashi was a very careful man and it wasn't like him to take any sort of threat to a person's health lightly and though he felt the need to be straight with the facts with all of his patients, the girl's hopeful expression stayed what he really wanted to say.

"It's possible", He conceded nodding his head lightly. "Though, considering the circumstances and your past history, I would prefer to be on the safe side and have the tests done before a proper diagnosis can be decided upon."

Minako nodded, a ghost of a smile coming to her lips at the promising prospect that she just may not be getting sick again, at least not this time.

-----

"Who can state Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophy on the natural man?"

Mrs. Chinatsu Yeoh paced in front of her class, staring down the rows and looking for an unsuspecting daydreamer to call on for the answer.

But as per usual, Chikako Takamora, her brightest student; threw her hand up into the air before everyone else's.

Internally, Rei along with half the class groaned. Chikako was TA's brightest student and her reputation wouldn't be considered such a negative thing if she didn't have to brag about it constantly at all hours of the day and hold it over everyone else's heads. Though Rei was certainly grateful for her intervention in classes like this where she always knew the answer so Rei herself, would be spared the humiliating drudge of raising her hand for Mrs. Yeoh to exploit.

It wasn't that she was lazy, Rei just wasn't in the mood to care today.

Rei blinked for a second as a sudden thought came into her mind. This sort of mood was a frequent frame of mind for her while in school and until only recently she had written it off as normal for students of her age, but what if it wasn't?

Not caring was an ever present cloud over Rei's life. Her grades were good, though without extra effort, her relations ship with her grandfather wasn't a bad one, and her work at the shrine had become common place. Nothing seemed to phase her anymore, nothing seemed to matter, it was just done, like a never ending routine that repeated itself each day.

There was no deviation. There was nothing out of the ordinary that dictated that she had to give anything more than she had been taking for the last ten years.

Was that odd? To see the world as if you'd seen it all before and didn't expect anything more than what you already knew was out there? To have no hope for anything different? Anything better?

Or was that expected at some point?

Rei sighed and rubbed at her forehead with her free hand. There were just too many questions floating around in her head to keep any of them straight, but then again why worry so much about what already was and probably always would be?

Oh great, now she was being all dark and shady. No wonder the other girls were weary of her.

"Hino."

Uh-oh, "Yes ma'am?"

"You look pretty deep in thought over there." Mrs. Yeoh gave her an unsympathetic nod as she stopped in pacing and took a few steps forward towards the class. "Answer the question please."

As Rei took a quick glance across the classroom she noticed that Chikako had visibly wilted, her hand now resting back on the desk and her head slightly bowed in disappointment that she was not able to prove herself.

Rei was not going to feel bad for this. It wasn't her fault that she had been called on by the teacher instead of her. Besides, that damn know it all answered almost every question in the class anyway, she had to learn to be a loser sometime, Rei though, but her action belittled her thoughts as she turned back to Mrs. Yeoh.

Nonchalantly, she shrugged her shoulders, "I don't know the answer to that question, Mrs. Yeoh, but I think Chikako does."

As Rei finished with the little lie she slanted her head in Chikako's direction causing the shy, but grateful girl to perk up and raise her hand again, the confident smile spreading itself over her face again.

"I bet she does." Mrs. Yeoh narrowed her eyes at Rei in warning, not bothering to spare a glance at Chikako, "But I didn't call on her, I called on you. You're not an ungifted girl, Hino. Your grades suggest that you have a high aptitude for academics and yet when it comes to class participation you do only what you need to get by. You don't apply yourself. It's laziness, Hino, sloth and sloth is a sin."

Rei rolled her eyes at the stupid old sentiment. She could never figure out why that one made it into the top seven.

"If only your father could hear about what an unmotivated girl he has, but that's right, the senator didn't raise you did he?" It wasn't a question really just a facetious statement meant to get a rise out of Rei.

And it worked.

Keiko Oshida grimaced as Rei's chair in front of her screeched back across the yellow marble top floors and into the front of her desk as the girl stood up, rigid. Well, it certainly didn't take very much, Keiko thought.

"Oh and I suppose you raised your kids too after their father took them in the divorce. These walls talk, Yeoh and they don't speak very favorably of you."

Mrs. Yeoh's face screwed up in something akin to horrified awe before it set in a grim mold of resentful anger. "That's it, I can't handle you any more, I'm not strong enough. Get out of my classroom."

Rei gathered her things slowly, wearing a confident smirk on her face over the victory as she moved to walk slowly past the older woman. As she did, she bumped the woman's shoulder and almost knocked her over, but before Mrs. Yeoh could yell at her to go to the principal's office, Rei was had marched out the door.

-----

_The warmth of a fireplace played against her skin as Minako lay on her stomach on the floor of a large living room, propped up on a pillow with a sheet covering only her waist down. The night had been a perfect one, but in all honesty, she would have to admit that the whole day had tired her out. Cuddling closer with the pillow, Minako closed her eyes and let the warmth of the fire and the sounds of the logs crackling in the hearth to lull her into a light slumber. _

_Before she could get much rest, the resonance of soft fingers ghosting softly from the base of her spine up to where it met her neck woke her. _

"_You're so beautiful."_

_The gentle alto tone of the familiar voice made Minako smile, though her eyes were still shut, she didn't have to see the person to know who they were. _

_It was her beloved stranger. The nameless woman who dominated her dreams each night. Who held her, kissed her, spoke softly to her, and whispered sweet nothings in her ear to lull her to sleep. Now those same lips were determined to wake her up as they landed hotly on the back of her bare neck after ample fingers had whisked the blonde hair concealing the skin away. _

"_You're incorrigible." Mina chided with a pleased sigh as two arms encircled her waist and held her in a relaxed, but affectionately possessive embrace. _

"_Only for you, my Mina."_

_Quick kisses blazed a trail up the side of her bare neck before reaching her jaw line. With a contented hum, Minako turned her head to the side and captured the other's lips in a daring kiss, very intent on keeping the heart that had so masterfully taken hers. _

Minako opened her eyes to the constant fluorescence of the hospital atmosphere, blinking the purple spots back from her vision as she tried to separate her new reality from the surreal world of the dream she had just been in.

A nurse from the hall entered the room, coming up alongside Minako's bed and giving her head a reassuring squeeze. "How are we feeling today, deary?"

Internally, Minako rolled her eyes at the misplaced display of motherly affection, but put a smile on her face nonetheless. "Much better, thanks."

"That's good to hear. We've all been very worried about you." The nurse gave her hand a gentle pat. "Dr. Kuribayashi asked me to tell you when you were awake that we managed to get a hold of your father this morning. He assured us that he will be on a flight out of Sydney this very evening."

A wholesome smile spread over Minako's face despite the next topic she was about to bring up, "What about my aunt and my mother?"

At this, the nurse seemed almost guilty over having to break the girl's good mood by delivering the bad news, "Your aunt was still indisposed as of this morning and we're still unable to reach your mother."

Figures, Minako thought to herself as she relaxed back against the pillows. Oh well, what did she care? Her father was coming home for once! For just one moment Minako let herself forget the exact circumstances of his visit, basking in the joy of finally being able to spend time with her father as she used to when she was a child, before he moved for his work. Since then his business schedule had taken precedence over his family life, but not anymore.

"Now, my dear, Dr. Marko is on Dr. Kuribayashi's service this week and he is going to be here shortly to prep you for your MRI."

"What were the results of the scan?"

"The CT scan? I'm not authorized to give you that information. After the MRI's results are in, Dr. Kuribayashi will be in to speak to you about the tests."

Minako nodded quietly with a small grin of acknowledgment, the nurse still watching her intently.

"You know, deary." She finally said, "I have a granddaughter your age and I have to say she is one of your biggest fans."

Internally, Minako thought about how little of a surprise that was and smiled one of the first genuine smiles she'd held in a long time.

"Is she? That's a real compliment, I'm flattered. How old is she exactly?"

"She's very nearly fifteen. Her birthday is early next month."

Minako nodded, the light in her eyes taking on a healthy mischievousness. "Do you have a gift picked out for her yet?"

"Actually," The older lady raised a hopeful expression on her face. "I was hoping you would be able to help me with that?"

Minako's smile turned catty and the mischevious light in her eyes amplified into a blaze.

"Anything for one of my biggest fans."

* * *

"Time is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary".

-Ivy Compton-Burnett-

(1884 – 1969)


	4. I'm Going Nowhere

_**Chapter Four: I'm Going Nowhere**_

The hectic light of a full moon shone unblinkingly down upon the shingled roof of the Hikawa Shrine. It was long after midnight and yet Rei Hino was far from tired. She had walked home alone as per usual, not bothering to go back to her locker to retrieve her jacket after her ordered visit to the monsignor's office despite the early onset of the cool fall weather. Goosebumps had pricked up on her skin during the brisk midmorning walk back to the shrine, but Rei would be damned it she was going to show that it affected her.

Her pride covered a multitude of sins or at least that was the point the elderly monsignor had spent forty five minutes trying to drum into her head. Of course, the best thing for an authority figure to do in that type of situation was to school the child who almost decked her teacher on the matter of her sins….

Schools, teachers, principals; they never did anything for the discrete good of their students. It was always to save their own sorry hides.

Hers was the premiere high end Catholic school for the daughters of Tokyo's elite citizens, of course they couldn't let a situation like what had taken place in Yeoh sensei's class lightly.

And it pissed Rei off. Why couldn't they just leave well enough alone? Why couldn't they just leave her alone? She was better off that way.

Knock, pull, aim, release and thwack.

A wooden arrow embedded itself in dead center of the straw target near of the edge of the woods behind the off shoot of the shrine the served as her home. The constant tension that had become so natural to Rei it had almost become a part of her, immediately eased out of her back and shoulders at least somewhat as she lowered the bow down to her waist.

Damn them, damn them all.

Damn the monsignor and his narrow minded righteousness. Damn Mrs. Yeoh and her big fat mouth. Damn her classmates and their meddling, scrutinizing eyes. She didn't need them. She didn't need anybody.

Knock, pull, aim, release, thwack!

She hated them all. Every last one of them.

The monsignor had his head up his ass and he could just go to hell in a hand basket for all she cared. Mrs. Yeoh too. After all, it was her fault in the first place.

Did the monsignor even stop to address the wrongful behavior done the part of _his _employee? No, of course he hadn't. Why would he when it was a respectable teacher's word against a teenage girl with a history of attitude issues orphaned in Tokyo by her famous father who could pay to have his affairs kept quiet, if he even still cared that much.

Knock, pull, aim, release, thwack!

Okay, maybe that was a little harsh, even for her, but it was no secret throughout the academy that Rei's father wasn't exactly a shoe in for the father of the year award…and that she was screwed up because of it.

Knock, pull, aim, release, thwack; Knock, pull, aim, release, thwack!!

She admitted it freely. There was something wrong with her and she had been denying it to the world and herself her entire life. There was something wrong with her that wasn't inherent to her, it had happened to her and she wasn't fighting it. Instead, she was letting it eat her alive and Rei didn't care if it devoured her whole.

Knock, pull, aim, release, thwack!

Rei lowered the bow to her waist again and relaxed her arms, breathing heavier now after the recent exertion. Though she could feel herself beginning to sweat, the coldness of the night against the bare skin of her arms made the fine hair there stand on end.

This was ridiculous.

She should be in her warm bed curled up in equally comfortable covers dreaming about boys and first kisses and dates like most of the girls her age.

But she wasn't. She was out doing target practice in the middle of the night under a full moon in only pajama shorts and a comfortable t-shirt because such thoughts always made her feel naturally ill.

And she tried to avoid them as much as possible….especially one particular aspect of them.

The boys.

Rei had never been particularly attracted to nor trustworthy of them (and she was pretty sure she had her father to thank for the latter of those two rationales).

When she was little, Rei had begun to realize that she seemed to notice the girls more than the boys, but she never felt it was unnatural in anyway or at least she hadn't until she met her.

The little blonde girl with the yellow handkerchief she had met only once in a hospital gift shop.

She had never learned the other girl's name or anything about her beyond the one act of kindness she had offered her, but the image of the blonde girl's smiling face and friendly blue eyes had stayed with Rei through the years, ghosting their way through her life alongside her.

There was just something in those eyes. Something that reached out to her, searching her for something the other had seemed to be yearning for. And for a moment that day, Rei had almost felt something inside of herself respond to that same yearning, but it had been a fleeting realization, one that she hadn't and still didn't fully understand.

It was like there was a part of her that she couldn't control or even remember existed and yet it was pulling strings in her life.

And loss of control was not a thing Rei Hino was comfortable with.

With deep breath and exhalation to calm herself, Rei blew the sweaty bangs off of her forehead and raised the bow back to shoulder height.

Knock and pull.

With one of the last arrows pulled back towards her chin, Rei hesitated. The small circle at the center of the target was filled to the brink with already spent arrows, some of them so close together that they had splintered down the whole length of their oak wood shafts.

Rei immediately lowered the bow back to her waist, the arrow stick knocked onto the string, not expecting to see that.

She didn't remember being that angry…nor did she remember loosing that many arrows though she had to admit that she hadn't really been paying attention that much. It was all a heated blur in her head that she didn't really feel the need to repeat anymore. The target practice had had the desired affect and worn away most of her frustration.

Though a great deal more lay bubbling beneath the surface of what she was currently feeling, Rei didn't feel like tapping into it now would be a good ideal.

Wrapping her thumb around the bowstring in a practiced movement, Rei detached the arrow from it in one easy gesture. Relaxing completely, she let the bow drop to her side as she brought the arrow tip up so it was level with her line if vision. The sharp steel point shone silver in the moonlight and reminded her of a blade. You know, the type Julius Caesar was stabbed to death with and the kind Hamlet raises to the mirror in his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy (at least in the Branagh version) .

Slowly, she rolled her wrist so that the bluish white light reflected on the blade rotated its focus from side to side.

"I really am going nowhere."

The cold truth in those words belittled that of the night air as they were released from her mouth. If she didn't at least try. If she didn't make a change somewhere, she would be this broken for the whole of her life. Hers would be a home where little kids would dare their more gullible classmates to run up and ring her doorbell (if she had a doorbell), she could see it in her mind's eye already and it was not a pleasant fiction.

Rei took a deep breath and released it, lowering the arrow and letting it slip through her grasp until her fingers felt the soft feather fletchings at the end and tightened automatically.

What was she doing? What was the purpose of her life and was she destined to spend the whole of it alone?

Changes needed to be made, but the how and when, Rei wasn't quite sure of just as she was almost completely unsure of what it was she wanted out of her life at this point, but there had to be something, anything better than this.

Feeling her own fatigue, Rei retrieved the bow and climbed back up on to the porch. She could leave the arrows embedded in the target until morning when she had to complete her morning chores anyway. She was too tired tonight.

* * *

Hisao Shimotsumaki rolled over in his bed with a frustrated groan as the annoying beeping sound of his alarm clock interrupted his sleep. Fuck mornings. They had no real purpose anyway. Who needed an early start to the day?

An obnoxious pounding on his door, knocked the already grumpy teen out of his lingering thoughts.

"Hisao, wake up!" The voice behind the door was full of fatigue and frustration as the battered exclamation ended in a sigh. "You better get ready fast or your sister will eat up all your cereal."

Retreating footsteps ushered his mother's departure from his door through the hallway and down the stairs as the sound slowly faded away.

Hisao ran one hand lazily through his dark disheveled hair, the short spikes rudely misaligned after a night spent tossing and turning from 4 am on. He rolled over, laying half on the bed, half in the air while staring at the ceiling through a groggy haze.

Today was not going to be a good day. He could feel it in his bones. That didn't make him sound like an old man or anything. Hisao rolled his eyes at himself.

Okay, now he was being boring. He was going to fall back asleep if he didn't watch it and his mother would make sure he never heard the end of it.

Yep, his life really did suck balls.

Sighing, Hisao rolled off the bed and stood up, tending to an itch through the front of his boxers briefly as he moved enroute to his closet. Yawning lazily, he pulled his uniform shirt and pants down from their designated hangers, dropping his tie in the process. Hisao grumbled before bending down and picking the wretched piece of clothing up and pacing down the hallway towards the upstairs bathroom to change for the coming day.

After a quick shower and a ten minute fight with his tie (which he lost), Hisao slid down the banister into the downstairs kitchen fully clothed and earning a disapproving look from his mother for the action which he chose to ignore by sitting down at the table next to his father.

The older Shimotsumaki had his attention buried in the morning paper, which he very seldom moved to notice the world around him, not even when his wife set down a steaming bowl of cereal in front of him.

Sakura Shimotsumaki turned away from the stove where she was stirring the remnants of the hot cereal she had made for breakfast and eyed her son critically. Finally, she shook her head at him.

"Hisao, your hair." She indicated the barely dry spikes on top of his head sticking out haphazardly in all directions.

"It's a new style mother. It's all the rage with the young people now days." Hisao replied stirring his cereal disinterestedly.

His mother rolled her eyes, filling a little pink bowl with what was left in the pot on the stove, "Well, tell the young people today that combs are not optional and rooster tails are not a fashion statement."

Hiaso grumbled and muttered something under his breath, but it disappeared beneath the sounds of running feet as his little sister Mika came bounding into the room, a blur of pink and purple that ended at the kitchen table beside her brother.

And he was always the first member of her family she liked focusing on in the mornings.

"Good Morning, Hisao."

Hisao grunted intelligibly at his sister and shoved a spoonful of warm cereal into his mouth while Mika climbed into her chair, scampering easily into her booster seat. Hisao was half hoping against hope that this would be a quiet morning and that she wouldn't pounce enthusiastically all over him, but this was wishful thinking on his part.

Sure enough, Mika leaned over and sniffed indiscreetly at his cereal. "Whatcha eating?"

"What you're about to have shoved down your throat in just a second."

Mika wrinkled her nose and the two shared a short horrified look before the steaming pink bowl was set in front of her and their mother glared down at them until they each looked down into their cereal.

"You two aren't allowed to leave the table until both of your bowls are clean, I don't care if you miss the bus and have to walk to school. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and you can't start a decent day without it." Sakura shook her head in absolution, her black bangs bouncing against her forehead. "And your father will back me up on this. Hiroyuki, tell them."

The man didn't even remove his newspaper, but offered his monotone support in just under a few groggy words, "Kids, listen to your mother."

Hisao and Mika both broke into huge grins which they tried desperately to hide as their mother moved over and used the kitchen towel in her hand to smack her husband's shoulder which caused

the newspaper blocking his face and chest to visibly wince.

After their mother had returned to the stove, Hisao cleaned his spoon in his mouth and then exhaled on it while Mika watched curiously. Then with a carnies' skill, he placed the spoon on his nose and it stuck there like a shinny new appendage.

Mika forgot herself and clapped enthusiastically for him and their mother's sharp reprimand followed her.

"Hisao!"

Hisao flinched and his nose lost the extra length it had been supporting as the spoon clattered to the table top.

"Don't do that. Just finish your breakfast, your bus will be arriving at the corner any minute and you still have to get your shoes on and fetch your coat and backpack."

"Ah, the ball and chain."

Mika giggled, his mother frowned, and the newspaper gave a curt clearing of its throat.

"Alright, I'm outta here."

Hisao didn't go over to his mother or his father, but bent over to give Mika a goodbye kiss on the forehead which she giggled at and then raced to grab his things before his mother realized that he hadn't taken a bit of his cereal.

* * *

"Daddy!"

"Mina darling!"

The tall blonde man spread his arms out wide and leaned down to give his only child a hug, the obvious height difference making it easier for him to sit down on the edge of the bed than to remain standing.

As her father hugged her, Minako released the deep breath she had been holding, allowing the anxiety she had been feeling all day ebb quickly away. It was the morning after he was supposed to arrive and she had resigned herself to the realization that he wasn't coming. It was a horrible thought, she knew, to doubt him, but as much as her parents tried to be there for her, enough holidays and usual visits had been canceled in the past to convince Minako that they didn't always hold to their word where she was concerned.

Materially, she hadn't and never would want for anything, but what money could buy had never been what Minako had so desired from the world, not even as a child.

Love.

How could one simple word explain the reason for being in a person's life?

Though she was grateful for everything her parents had given her, what Minako had always wanted from them the most was what was never said.

I love you.

How hard were those three little words to say between parents and their children? It couldn't be very hard. Minako had had enough childhood friends to know that part of it, but Minako hadn't heard those three simple words from her parents in over a decade.

And she knew enough about normal life to know that that was abnormal.

The emptiness the negative thoughts had stirred up in her retreated as her father's grip around her loosened and he pulled away to sit a comfortable distance away on the bed. Tentatively, he reached a hand out to brush a lock of hair away from her cheek and behind her ear before folding his hands professionally in his lap.

"How are you feeling today, sweetheart?"

"Pretty good, actually."

'Considering you're here and I still feel like screaming', but Minako didn't add that part and just smiled.

"That's good to hear, darling." Her father bowed his head and touched his forehead in an anxious gesture uncharacteristic of the charismatic businessman he was used to being, "Maybe we can get out of this unscathed this time."

"Dr. Kuribayashi said he wanted to wait until you were here with me to discuss the results of the tests." Minako broke the momentary silence that had lapsed between them, maintaining eye contact with the side of her father's head, where his eyes would have been if he had bothered to meet hers. "He says we need to talk before anything is decided."

That last statement caused Shoichi Aino to lift his head and finally meet his daughter's blue eyes, eyes that she had inherited from him.

"Do you think he found something?" He asked in a small voice for a man of his stature, both physically and professionally, but he seemed to rethink the belittling question revealing his insecurities and straightened his shoulders, "Whatever the findings, I have a proposal I would like to put to you, dear."

Minako blinked. How could he just not care? The minute her father started showing what he was really feeling, he seemed to find the switch somewhere and click it off before anyone could tap into it.

Minako looked away refusing to meet his eyes as he made a mediocre effort to hold hers, disappointed in him.

"Your Aunt Fusako and I have been talking and it seems you have her more than a little worried at the type of behavior you've started showing." That was never a good way to start, but it was the businessman in Shoichi that compelled him to be always frank and to the point even on a personal level, "She and I share concerns for your well being and I think we have come to a decision that will ultimately be better for you at least for the time being."

Minako hid her quiet outrage and instead quietly asked, "And what exactly have I been doing to worry her?

"Well, she says you're out until ungodly hours almost every night with people she doesn't know, strangers, she doesn't trust, especially the young men." With that last remark something in Shoichi's expression hardened, but he managed to catch it before it became obvious.

Internally, Minako rolled her eyes.

Of all people, her aunt shouldn't be judging her. If anything, Fusako wasn't concerned, she was jealous. However, Minako knew enough of her father to know when to keep her mouth shut and instead of screaming like she wanted to, she maintained a reserved but attentive expression and nodded.

But the anger in her fizzled out slightly, as a thoughtful smirk formed in her mind. If only her aunt really paid attention to her, then she would know that the boys she went with to parties were not the ones she had to be worried about.

Not waiting for her approval to continue, Shoichi took a deep breath and dove in.

"Your aunt and I think it would be best for you, in light of the current circumstances, to put your music career on hold for right now and enroll in school somewhere to make it possible for you to lead a more sedate, ordinary lifestyle."

Minako's jaw dropped. The part of her brain that controlled rationale and clear headedness clicked off and all of the previous restraint she had maintained over her feelings melted away just as quickly.

Had she just heard what she thought she heard?

"Daddy you…" Minako had to stop, her voice threatening to break on her and was forced to start again in a desperate plea for the only niche she had carved for herself in the world, "You can't be serious. Music is everything to me, I live for my music. You can't take that away from me or I will…I will fight you, Daddy, I will fight you and I will win."

Shoichi laughed lightly in the face of his daughter's determined look, as if she were putting him on or something, "Minako, darling, please be serious about this for a minute. Being subjected to the type of fame you have been living with at your age causes a lot of undue stress and pressure in someone's life that would be taxing on anybody, especially a young body. With your health, keeping up such a burden wouldn't be practical."

As if to ease the sting his laughter had caused, he reached out and held took Minako's hand, trying for a reassuring smile and getting a pretty good proxy of the real thing.

"It will be better for you in the long run, I promise."

He squeezed her hand in what he hoped would be a warm gesture, but she pulled it out of his grasp, a horrified expression on her face.

How could he be doing this to her? Didn't he know her at all? Everything she'd done, everything she had worked for…had he just not noticed? He wouldn't be asking this from her if he really knew what he was asking her to give up. But how could she explain to him what singing meant to her?

"Daddy, the fame is just a part of it, a small part." Minako swallowed to steady her voice so she would sound as unwavering as she felt, "Singing is what I live for. It's like air and you telling me to give it up is like telling me to stop breathing, I'll die."

Shoichi's mouth turned down in a tight lipped frown as he shook his head disapprovingly at her, but before he could open his mouth to put an end to the matter, a light knock came at the door and interrupted him.

"Is this a bad time?" Dr. Kuribayashi ducked his head inside the doorway, glancing back and forth between the two and raising his eyebrows to Shoichi.

Behind him a small group of nurses and orderlies had gathered at the nurse's station glancing curiously for a peak around the elderly doctor into the idol's room. Apparently the combined Ainos' voices had risen a little louder than they had noticed during their rather heated discussion, so much so, that people in the hallway had started to take interest in what they were saying.

No matter. Shoichi cleared his throat and straightened his tie knot before motioning to the doctor to come in. The old man did so and just as he was turning to close the door, the elder Aino shot his daughter a look that said this was a closed issue with no further deliberation.

He was her father after all, and Minako was only fourteen, still a minor subject to obey his rules under law. She could protest all she wanted, but it was done. Even before he had scheduled his flight from Australia to Tokyo, he had called his lawyers and ordered them to enter negotiations with Yomra Studios. If he couldn't talk them into releasing her current contract then he was going to lean on them and lean hard. It wouldn't be long after that. It was already done, all he had to do was convince his daughter that it was all in her best interests.

"How did the tests come out doctor?"

Shoichi turned his attention completely away from his daughter, ignoring the angry tears beginning to form in the corners of her eyes and crossed his legs casually in preparation to focus on the newest occupant of the room.

Kuribayashi clasped his hands together, but remained standing at the foot of Minako's bed.

"The CT scan was clean, but during the MRI I spotted a small area of the brain in which there was an…abnormality."

Shoichi straightened and his grip on his knee tightened. "What sort of abnormality?"

Kuribayashi pulled a set of x-rays off of the bedside table the younger man hadn't noticed the doctor bring in and set them up on the windowsill, the early morning light from the outside back lighting the smaller images of Minako's brain so they were clearly visible to all three people in the room.

The doctor took a step back and pointed to one of the top scans, "Looking at the T2 scan, here, you can see that there is a spot in the center of the brain almost just at the juncture of where the two hemispheres meet, just below the corpus collosum."

Shoichi squinted at the tiny dot at the center of one of the brains the doctor was indicating, not seeing it. "What is it, exactly?"

"Well, it's too small to discern at this point in time." The elderly doctor reached up to removed his glasses and used one side of his lab coat to clean them. "It could be an aneurysm that could rupture and be potentially harmful or she could go the rest of her life with it and not have a single health related concern. It's a coin toss, essentially." At Shoichi's horrified reaction to his unusual nonchalance, Kuribayashi placed his hands on his hips and moved to elaborate further, "For now at least, there is nothing we can really do but wait and see what becomes of it. It's too small to biopsy and it's also situated in a precarious place in the brain making it virtually inoperable."

The elder Aino was apparently having a hard time with this.

"Are you saying my little girl could die?"

A younger doctor may have lost it then, but years of dealing with patients and their families had taught Kuribayashi that it was to his advantage to have patience with people no matter what the circumstances.

"You know better than I, Mr. Aino, that it has always been a possible outcome for her though this is not a situation that may necessarily cause her death. She could live a long and healthy life despite her condition. As a scientist, I've never held much store by this view of life, but in her case it seems to be true. It's just a matter of chance, science has no further part in it to play."

Shoichi leaned back and sighed heavily muttering something along the lines of, "I have to take this in for a moment."

But perhaps the least affected by the news in the room was Minako and for once, when she began sobbing uncontrollably, it wasn't because she was in pain or because she was afraid she was going to die.

Instead, she cried for the retreat of her music and the unbearable silence it left behind.

* * *

There were always lines for the drinking fountains on the first and second floors of TA Private Girls School because the majority of students passed them on their way to classes on those first two floors (excluding some of the poorer boarding students who lived on the upper floors and paid their tuition by washing dishes in the cafeteria and cleaning the bathrooms).

Rei's father paid her tuition, not because he cared really, but because a Hino, even a misfit like her, was always held above such menial and demeaning labor.

The line wasn't as long as it usually was, which was rare, and Rei noticed she was able to recognize most of the girls ahead of her. Many of them were in her own year and most of the others were only a little younger. Chikako Takamora was next in line for the fountain while Aiko Shizuki, one of the more popular girls in her class, and her ever constant tagalongs, Chizuko Oneda and Hatsu Urameshi. Several girls behind them, Keiko Oshida stood just ahead of Rei, her long auburn hair stretching all the way down to her waist and almost touching Rei's font.

And as Rei stood there, it didn't take long for her to realize that the little bookworm Keiko had been had grown into a very attractive young woman. She had tried hard to ignore the subtle curves beneath the unrevealing school uniform and the long, flawlessly smooth legs that crept down from the knee long depths of their uniform skirt.

Nearly Perfect legs.

As if on cue, Keiko suddenly turned around and flashed Rei a friendly smile. Rei straightened and immediately diverted her eyes to decorated stone of the wall beside her while at the same time trying to ignore the way her cheeks burned.

"Hello Rei."

Keiko's voice was kind, an emotion Rei didn't feel all that often from her classmates, and the mere presence of that rare feeling made Rei look over at her and meet her eyes.

Green eyes that meet hers as warm and inviting.

"How did you like Hiedi sensei's class this morning?"

Rei shrugged. "It's biology, how bad or good could it be?"

Keiko giggled behind her hand, "That's true. Biology has never been one of my strong suits though. Maybe we can study together sometime."

"Sure." Rei choked forward unsteadily, her cheeks burning an light shade of pink in the light of the cute smile Keiko was giving her.

"Hino, would you just ask her out already so we can all get a drink and be on our way. I have Yeoh sensei's class in five minutes!" A girl from their year whined from the back of the line.

Rei turned vehemently on her, "Can it, Yuki! You're late seventy percent of the time so what does it matter to you anyway?"

Yuki Yakamora huffed and marched of at the back of the line, the other students left regarding Rei with a look of trepidation.

"She has a point, you know."

"What?!" Rei squeaked indignantly, turning around to find that Keiko had moved up in line towards the drinking fountain since all of the other girls ahead of them had taken their drinks while they had been talking to each other.

Keiko bunched her long brown hair to one side so she could get a drink without getting any of her hair wet. Once she had had her fill, she stepped aside and when Rei didn't move to get her own drink or for the girls behind her, Keiko gently took her elbow and guided her to the side so she was out of the way.

Keiko reached up gently and brushed an errant strand of Rei's hair behind her ear. Finally, she met Rei's eyes, the thumb of her hand on Rei's elbow abstractly stroking the soft skin of her arm.

"I see you, Hino Rei." She said softly. "I see you everyday, sitting alone in class, not saying a word to anyone in the hall, and eating lunch alone in the cafeteria and I always wonder why. I wonder why this amazingly hot, intelligent, attractive girl has chosen to isolate herself from everyone her age when other girls in her year work at maintaining that sort of conformity. I wonder at it, but at the same time, you strike me as a passionate person and I too am passionate sometimes."

This last sentence carried an affectionate undertone to it, but Rei barely noticed it as the intensity of the eyes boring into hers was impairing her powers of observation.

"There is a fire in you, Rei. A deep burning fire that you've never let anyone feel or even know about." Keiko continued. She paused for effect and then stretched up on to her tippy toes, leaning into Rei's side and putting her lips next to her ear. "I want you to show it to me."

Rei had to work to keep her balance as the sensations of hot breath on her ear was distracting her from what would otherwise be common sense.

"Please, Rei," Keiko continued, "I don't care what we do, just let me in. I need to know you."

Finally, Keiko pulled back her green eyes meeting Rei's dazed ones. "It's your choice."

With that Keiko was gone, disappeared down the hall towards her next class, leaving Rei alone to contemplate her thoughts.

Did that seriously just happen? Was she really just cornered by one of the most attractive girls in her year and asked out?

Maybe she didn't realize who Rei was. Rei wasn't a person people liked. Not just people her in her class, but of all ages. No one talked to her and she had no friends her own age. Hers was a solitary existence that no one had made a move to question before.

And she wasn't sure if she liked her walls getting leaned on….even if the were leaned on by some of the sexiest legs in Tokyo.

She did not just think that…. Well why not? What more of an opportunity did she need and what did she really have to lose?

_I'm going nowhere…_

Rei swallowed the sudden fear that had risen inside her. Without wasting another moment just standing there like a bump on a log, she took off down the hall to see if she could catch Keiko again before class started.

* * *

They had sedated her shortly after Dr. Kuribayashi had left the room because no matter what any of the nurses had done, they couldn't get the idol to calm down otherwise. When Minako woke up she was told that her father had filled out all the necessary paper work and she was free to go as she pleased.

The sedative had worn off mostly by that evening or at least enough for Shoichi to arrange for her to be sent home while he worked on catching one of the last flights out of Tokyo to Victoria.

When they arrived back at their townhouse, Fusako was waiting on the steps for them, her long blond hair bellowing out into a veil behind her that Minako thought wasn't in the least flattering on the staunch woman even in her woozy state.

The driver opened the door, but Minako didn't move to get out immediately. She was still drowsy from the shot they had given her and a rhythmic pounding had begun in her head during the ride which seemed to be escalating now that they had stopped moving.

"Ms. Aino?" Jerome's head bent slightly so that he could see into the darken back seat. "Your aunt would like you to join her inside before you retire to your room for the evening."

Minako released a deep breath and leaned forward slightly, to see Fusako not only waiting for her on the steps above them but also tapping one of her heeled feet impatiently as she did.

Instead of hurrying to her feet, Minako relaxed more comfortably into the plush leather seat of the limousine. She didn't have the energy do this right now. She knew what was going to happen. Her aunt would hug her and then tell her that she had tried her best to be a good guardian and scold Minako away from the harmful life choices that had brought her to this sudden breach in health.

She just couldn't deal with it right this second and as Mina sat there, she new that if she gave up her dreams and resigned herself to what her family expected of her, then she really would go no where.

No where but into madness. She had to do something quick or she was sure it was going to kill her.

"Actually Jerome, I was wondering if I could have you drive me around the bock a couple more times." She let her head loll to the side unenthusiastically as she shot him her most charming smile, some small happy light coming back through her expression.

The tall silver haired driver gave her a small frown. He knew his orders. He knew his obligations, but he had never been able to refuse the wishes of a pretty girl even if it did get him into trouble later.

Sighing, he shut the passenger side door and meandered over to the driver's side, jumping in and starting the town car up again while ignoring the questions and protests coming from Fusako on the high steps.

They turned the corner and continued until the Aino's townhouse was out of sight from the road and many of the usual shops had faded away into high end family restaurants and family owned businesses.

Minako sighed. This was her favorite part of the city. She could spend all night here and not get tired of the little personal niches each family had carved out for themselves. Though she tended to associate with a rather rowdy party crowd attributed to her fame and international teen idol and all, that had never been Mina's forte. She loved people, but she hadn't been a true people person since early childhood.

The smile, the practiced airs she up on around her fans and the press, those were all fake. The real her wore a frown more often these days and dreamed of a place without ground or walls where she could just free fall and come out okay every moment of every day.

But if wishes were horses…. That was bullshit.

Forget wishing. If she wanted something she had to get it herself. That's not how it had always been for her, but it was how it would always be from now on. She'd make sure of that.

"Jerome, can we stop, I need to find a place to use the little girl's room and I'm not ready to go home just quite yet."

Grey eyes looked curiously back at her in the rear view mirror, but the elder man didn't question her wishes and pulled into the parking lot of one of the finer restaurants which would have been used to seeing a limo pull in now and then.

As soon as they were parked, Jerome reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a blue baseball cap and a pair of dark shades and handed them back to Minako, "Do you want me to escort you in, Ms. Aino?"

She put on the cap and held back the shades a moment as she gave her driver a crafty wink, "Don't worry, Jerome, I can handle it on my own. I'm a big girl."

Jerome sighed and tried to hide his frustration, "Of course you are, Ms. Aino, but I am sure your aunt would feel better-"

"My aunt is not here." Minako interrupted him quickly, though her tone was far from cheery, she had managed to keep the smile on her face whether she was still feeling it or not. "I'll be fine, Jerome. Besides, I won't be ten minutes."

The driver eyed her in the rear view mirror suspiciously, but nodded and Minako put on the shades and stepped out of the backseat.

The parking lot was relatively deserted save for a flawlessly dressed couple leaving the restaurant for their Mercedes. They nodded to Minako politely on their way to their car. Despite the fact that she was dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a shot sleeved yellow blouse with a black camisole underneath, they didn't seem to momentarily doubt that she was a member of their social class.

And Minako despised stuck up assumptions like that.

Just because she was headed into that restaurant, the well off couple had presumed that she was no different than they were and in social status, her family was probably about equal, but Minako hated being clumped into that same narrow category.

It might be what her family was, but it just wasn't for her.

Putting the incident behind her, Minako entered the restaurant. She'd been here a few times before with her parents before she had begun her music career, but no one seemed to recognize her otherwise and she was glad for it. Most of the tables near the doors were full of well dressed people and corporate businessmen.

As she was walking in, Minako heard certain snippets of a conversation at one of the tables nearest the doors where she was at.

"What's black and blue and used all over?"

"I don't know, Senator, what is it?"

"A Chinese prostitute."

The other man laughed loudly and Minako insides twisted in disgust. Who were those perverts?

"You're an animal, Hino."

Minako turned discretely towards her left where a dark haired man in his thirties sat conversing with two other men in shark grey suits and silk ties, both of them yielding their attention to the man in question. His features were angular, a bit drawn, but still young and vibrant. His eyes were a deep shade of undeniable brown that everyman in the Hino line shared and his suit was a sharp style of black pinstripes that showcased the senator's lifelong love for Armani.

He seemed familiar to Minako for some reason, maybe she had seen him on TV before? No, she wouldn't have remembered just one interview. Then how did she know him? In her search through her memories, she was drawn back to those eyes. Eyes that secretly scrutinized everything they touched.

Dark pools that engulfed the soul and killed it…

Minako suddenly knew where she remembered the man from. On her last trip to this restaurant with her family, her father had insisted that they share a table with the young, charismatic senator from one of Tokyo's most prestigious families: Takashi Hino known to his friends as "Ruyi".

That night after they had left the restaurant, the senator was all Minako's father could talk about. He had been so taken by his magnetism and his so called "liberal" ideals that he had promised to financially back him in the election that year. Minako had thought he was a fool then, but she had thought even less of Senator Hino.

He was an out and out jerk in her opinion.

All he had talked about were his ideas for a third term and how they were going to fuel the narrow minded ambitions of business men like her father for the international market.

He was nothing better than a shark in an expensive suit and Minako had no respect for such men and absolutely no problem letting them know it, but she wasn't in the mood today.

Leaving the trite little perverts to their conversation, Minako made her way to the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, Jerome still sat waiting in his car, just a bit pissed off that he had been left there for that long. When he entered the restaurant he went directly into the girl's restroom and amid the empty stalls all he found was an open window and an absent Minako.

* * *

"When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful

Every hour we spent together, lives within my heart

And when she was sad, I was there to dry her tears

And when she was happy, so was I, when she loved me."

The crowd sat spellbound by the young lady up on the stage. It was karaoke night at The Circle and though, people singing up on this stage was a common occurrence, very few of the participants in karaoke night had real talent as opposed to just being drunk or dared to perform by their friends.

This girl was a rarity.

Her voice had a range that most young girls had trouble using to their full potential skillfully and it had become quite apparent early on to Kameosuke that this kid was no novice to music.

He wondered if she had ever worked in the business before and if he could convince her to do a little show now and then. She was young, but she was a stunning beauty of a girl.

The arcade owner might just be able to make some money off of her if he could get her appearances on the stage to be a little more frequent.

"Through the summer and the fall, we had each other, that was all

Just she and I together, like it was meant to be

And when she was lonely, I was there to comfort her

And I knew that she loved me."

Everyone listening: men, women, and teenagers were leaning forward in their seats as if drawn like moths to a flame to the raw emotion pouring out through her voice.

It was heart wrenching.

"So the years went by, I stayed the same

And she began to drift away, I was left alone

Still I waited for the day, when she'd say 'I will always love you.'"

The petite blonde's popularity was evident with the crowd of people sitting in front of the stage. Every table was packed and all of the chairs were filled with eager listeners, young and middle aged; a rare combination of attention spans to be able to keep without faltering, but the girl was doing a fine job of it.

The kid had a gift.

She just didn't go through the motions, she was feeling every word of the song as if she were living it right there and then.

Minako's eyes were closed as if nothing else existed in the moment, but the song and the memories the words stirred in her of her exes, their convenient love, and then their empty promises flashed in front of her eyes as if she was seeing it all again and again without a reprieve.

But no tears welled up with the familiar tightening in her chest.

It was a process she was all too used to. They loved her, or pretended to, she loved them for real, and then came the bittersweet aftertaste of the end. Always the end.

None of them ever lasted longer than it took her to realize that they had never really cared for in the first place and the all illusive L word had only been a lie to get at her status or to make her to feel vulnerable so they could feel better about themselves.

She hated people. Minako would never admit it, but way down deep inside herself, a wall of ice had formed and it followed her into every conversation she ever had with someone. Anyone, even those who were supposed to be the closet to her because a relationship, no matter what it's level of involvement, never came without a price and she was always paying the boatman, it seemed.

Three little words. I love you.

No one had meant them yet, not even her parents and it was this constant ache that she put forward in the tone of her voice, all expressed through the lilt of the notes as they moved back and forth in fluid dynamic variance with the background music.

The lyrics flashed across a monitor above the bar, but she didn't need them.

Her heart was in this. Love didn't come from a person, it hadn't and might never come from them, but in music, she had a love and dedication that didn't have to be returned and couldn't use her or be lost. It was just her, her voice and the world and that was how she always wanted it to be.

Fuck people. Fuck petty emotions. Just leave her to her music and get out of her way.

"Lonely and forgotten, never thought she'd look my way,

She smiled at me and held me, just like she used to do,

Like she loved me, when she loved me.

When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful,

Every hour we spent together, lives within my heart

When she loved me."

The crowd cheered, a few men whistled, and all applauded while Minako took a small bow, a genuine smile on her face.

Now this was love.

Kami, it felt good to be back up on a stage again. She'd needed this.

Kameosuke clapped for her as he jumped up on stage beside her and grabbed the microphone from where she had set it down.

"Thank you ladies and gentlemen and let's give a big round of applause for this talented little lady."

The whole room roared with cheers and applause louder than before, and some people stood up, a few at least at every table.

Kameosuke was very pleased with the result. Yes, he was indeed. He had to know who this girl was.

He sided up to her indiscreetly, "Excuse me miss, but I didn't catch your name when you got up on the stage."

Name? Oh, God…

The crowd quieted to hear her answer, but Minako tried to verbally side step the man as much as possible.

"Oh, I think it's best that we don't bother with names at the moment." Minako said flashing the man a flawless smile beneath her sunglasses and base ball cap, which she had turned backwards a long time ago.

"Ah, well it seems now ladies and gents that we have an anonymous artist here with us here tonight." Well, he had tried, so much for that great money making idea of his. " Let's give it up one last time for this sensational young lady!"

The crowd whistled again and again Minako bowed before gently hopping off of the stage. She'd had her fun, now it was time for her to go. Despite the adrenaline running through her, Minako was still feeling a little tired from before and she knew she could use the rest despite her desire not to leave the music behind as much as possible.

Slowly, Minako weaved her way through the crowd of still admiring people, some of them patting her on the back or shaking her hands while some of the more audacious guys tried getting her number; and finally to the doors leading out onto the sidewalk where real life once again awaited her.

* * *

It was raining…again.

It'd been four days! Hadn't whatever divine powers that be had enough of it already?

The clouds above the girls' heads rumbled in protest and the light sprinkle intensified a bit into full fledged drops.

Apparently not.

Rei grimaced and held the black umbrella over their heads, gripping the handle a little tighter against the mild breeze that had popped up during their walk home from school. Beside her, Keiko Oshida shivered just a bit beneath her uniform issued sweater.

"Are you cold?"

Keiko shook her head no, but the slight quivering in her cheeks gave her and her chattering teeth away. Rei shifted the umbrella from hand to hand and craftily removed her red jacket and placed handed it to Keiko.

"Here." She said, not looking at her so that annoying blush wouldn't rise up in her cheeks again.

"Awww…you're so cute!!" Keiko squealed, throwing Rei off guard as she took the jacket from her and slipped it on. "Thank you, Rei."

"No problem."

Rei was sorry she hadn't noticed sooner, but she hadn't really been with it today. As if she could read her mind, the girl at her side looked up at her.

"You okay?" Keiko asked with a tinge of concern, "You've been spacing out all day."

"Really?" Rei asked as if she were surprised, but in reality she knew better than anyone that she'd been locked away in her own thoughts all day.

"Yeah." Keiko followed the little rouse up with a genuine comment, "You're one distracted girl."

"Yeah." Rei agreed, still not looking at her.

Keiko sighed. Was she ever going to be able to get this girl to pay attention to her? They'd been walking for ten minutes already and Rei hadn't made intentional eye contact with her once. If there was ever going to be anything more between them, like she hoped there would be, then things would have to change.

Rei would have to change.

Suddenly, Keiko stopped and Rei got a few paces ahead of her before turning around to regard her strangely.

"What are you doing? Get back under the umbrella."

Keiko braced her shoulders and squeezed her hands into tight fists at her sides.

"Not until you look at me."

Now, Rei was truly confused. "But I am looking at you."

"Ugh, not now, before!" The girl squealed in frustration at her. "How dense can you be?"

Rei swallowed, at a loss, "I…I don't know. How dense can you be?"

Keiko's eyes turned wide and offended. "That was a rhetorical question! You weren't supposed to answer it!!"

Rei swallowed again, "Um…sorry?" She tried, still very much confused.

"That does it, that is it!!" Keiko gave her a withering glare and marched off, brushing past Rei down the sidewalk, grumbling to herself as she rounded a corner towards home.

And Rei's jacket went with her.

"Weird." Rei whispered.

She didn't know what she'd done wrong. True, Rei had never been much of a people person, but she was pretty sure that all she had been was polite. She hadn't meant to be insulting at all.

Maybe she would call Keiko tomorrow and apologize. It was the right thing to do. Whatever had upset her, it was Rei's fault, she didn't know what it was yet.

But she would find out and make the wrong right.

"Way to drop the bomb on her."

A soft voice came from beneath an awning at her side. Rei turned around and squinted her eyes through the softly falling rain to catch a glimpse of the speaker. A petite blonde in jeans, sunglasses (a particularly odd piece of attire for such a dreary day, Rei noted) a backwards baseball cap stood, rubbing her hands over her bare arms in an effort to keep warm against the wind that had just sprung up harder than before.

Odd, it's not summer. How come this girl didn't know that?

"Who are you?" Rei asked curiously.

"Uh…" Minako's brain shut down as those eyes turned on her.

_Eyes of dark amethyst that stared into her soul…_

Minako involuntarily shivered as another chilly gust of wind knocked into her. This was not good. She hadn't planned on it getting colder outside. Stupid…She had to make it home though. There was no way she was going back to the hospital, not again.

"Hey." Rei brought the blonde's attention back to her as she took a few careful steps toward her, not caring that the girl hadn't answered her. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Minako assured, but inside she could feel her blood racing and her vision beginning to blur. "I'm fine."

No, no, no!

Rei shook her head, crossing the distance between them to stand under the awning beside her before discarding her umbrella, "No you're not."

"I'm fine!" Minako yelled suddenly, trying for all she was worth to keep her world from spinning out of control again.

She didn't need this. God damn it! She didn't need this!

To her surprise though, Rei matched her tone and shouted back at her, "You are not fine!"

Minako's eyes widened for a split second behind her sunglasses. Usually people shrank back from her when she did that. They usually just took her word for it and left her be, but this stubborn stranger had given her an unexpected rebuttal which she wasn't sure she had the energy to deny right now.

Fine. Minako relented, coming to a consensus within herself. She didn't know why she was doing this.

Damn those eyes…

"Fine, you're right." Minako conceded, not liking the feeling of giving in.

Rei seemed taken aback. She certainly hadn't expected that of all things, "I am?"

Minako eyed her suspiciously, "Oh, don't let it go to your head! If I wanted a show of egotism I could have just stayed at the bar."

She just wanted this girl to leave and she hoped the insult would do the trick, but Rei didn't budge nor did she even look insulted at all.

Minako opened her mouth, but before she could say anymore, she felt a sudden shortness of breath take her over and she lost her footing, falling back into nothingness.

God damn it!! No, no!

Expectantly, the idol closed her eyes, in anticipation of slamming into the hard pavement, but instead, she was cushioned by a firm arm catching under her back and supporting her.

Slowly, that same arm brought her back to her former standing position and when Minako opened her eyes, she was staring straight into deep pools of amethyst and violet which, in turn, were staring straight through her sunglasses and into her soul.

Minako felt like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

She couldn't move, she couldn't think. All she could do was stand still as their warm breaths mingled in the cold night air, offering a small form of warmth to the chilled skin of her face and neck.

Those eyes, God those eyes, Minako knew them from somewhere. But how?

She was sure that if she'd met this girl she would have remembered. She wasn't particularly fond of people, but she wasn't a social moron. Most of the people she met, she could recognize and name on sight, especially the pretty girls.

So what was with this one? Minako was almost sure she had never met her before in her life and yet everything about her seemed familiar. Rei's sent, lavender and cherries, reminded her of the few good childhood memories she had retained.

Even her touch.

Minako had had a few girlfriends in the past, but most of them were inexperienced teens whose touches were fast, quick, and mostly self serving. But this girl, she was different. Though Minako had regained her footing, the stranger was still holding her to her, firm but gentle, warm but aloof, all at once.

What the hell? What had brought thought up in her?

Finally, Rei cleared her throat and broke the silence that lay between them.

"Feeling better?"

Minako's eyes widened into a dazed expression, "What?"

Rei readjusted her weight on both feet, moving discretely from side to side, to dissipate some of her nervous energy while also realigning her hold on the other girl, not letting her go yet.

"Are you feeling better now?"

Minako had get away from those captivating eyes so she could think clearly or she would never get her brain up and running again so she closed and let out a deep breath, "Y-yes, I am."

"I don't know why, but I believe it this time." Rei smiled and Minako couldn't help but do the same though she didn't quite understand why.

Minako shrugged and Rei reluctantly relinquished her hold on her, "You seem like the insightful type."

Rei meant to smile, but it came out more as a grimace as a warm blush spread over her cheeks and Minako laughed.

"Now, that is cute!"

And just as easily Rei's grimace turned into a frown. "Take that back."

Minako turned on her heels and winked though she knew Rei couldn't see it over the glasses, " I most certainly will not. You'll just have to deal with it."

Rei crinkled up her nose at that, but instead of opening her mouth to fight back, it asked a simple question, "Where do you live?"

"Huh?" Minako hadn't quite come out of playful banter mode yet and was just a bit unprepared for the sudden question or the intent behind it, but her mind jumped back on board quickly and her suspicions grew. "Why?"

"Because I want to walk you home."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want you to pass out again." Rei sighed, the protective side of her emerging, "What would happen to you if you were all alone?"

Minako had no response for that, instead she jumped back into banter mode and poked Rei playfully in the solar plexus "Easy there, Casanova. How about you buy me dinner first?"

Rei snorted, "In your dreams."

"I wouldn't doubt it tonight." Minako muttered appraising a flustered Rei in her small uniform skirt up and down behind the safety of the tinted glasses.

"What was that?!"

"Nothing." Minako gave her a flawless smile and the blush came up in Rei's cheeks again.

Rei felt the need to repeat herself. "I want to walk you home."

"I don't know, I don't usually let dashing strangers walk me home. What would the neighbors say?" Minako teased.

Rei let out a frustrated sigh, "Woman! I just don't know what to do with you. First you get my attention, then you almost pass out, and now you want me to let you go home _alone_ when God only knows what could happen to you."

An uncontainable grin spread itself across Minako's features. Kami, she was so cute when she was frustrated…

"Well, what do you know?" Minako quipped, "Chivalry is not yet dead apparently."

Rei didn't think her cheeks could go any darker, but she knew she must look like an oversized cherry by now and she was not a fan of that aspect of herself.

But Minako, however, couldn't get enough of it.

"So, Casanova, if I let you walk me home, what's your price?"

Rei straightened. "Excuse me?"

Minako sighed and reached out for Rei's hand in the growing darkness, "Come on, Casanova, we can decide the terms on our way there."

The Aino's townhouse, like most of the homes of the girls from TA, was in the high end part of town, located at the heart of the private sector. Minako was able to navigate them there without being seen for the most part, though she couldn't have cared less. Along the way, she made fun of Rei some more and got to see that lovely blush of hers darken several more times.

By the time she made it to her house, Minako had had the most fun with another person that she had had in years and she was reluctant to let it past. Coming down the private sidewalk beneath the street lights, Minako finished laughing at one good quip Rei had got in at her and looked up, scanning the dark windows of the townhouse for any sign of her aunt.

But experience had taught her that just because she didn't catch sight of the conniving woman didn't mean she wasn't there.

As much as she didn't want it to, this had to end. Stopping at the wrought iron fence by the driveway, Minako turned to face her escort.

"So…here we are."

Rei's former smile waned slightly as she looked up at the gigantic house. It was a mansion like her grandfather's and probably no warmer. A mansion was too big to be a proper home. A soul could get lost there and never be able to find its way out again.

Rei looked down and focused on Minako's sunglasses. "So…" She repeated, uncertainly.

"Yeah," Rei echoed in much the same way, not wanting to leave either.

She hadn't experienced this close of a connection to someone near her own age since she was a small child and she reluctant to let it go.

One didn't miss what one didn't know, Rei thought abstractly, but now…

She would miss this. She knew she would.

A regrettable silence had stretched the moments between them and Mina couldn't take it anymore.

She suddenly leaned forward, grabbing both sides of Rei's grey uniform vest in her hands and pulling her forward so their lips could meet.

And they did and it was wonderful.

Minako couldn't remember the last time she had kissed someone so…what was the word? Innocent. Yeah that was it. Rei startled at first, as if she'd never been kissed before, but it only took a few seconds of gentle guidance for her to get her bearings and grow just a bit bolder.

Though she's still an innocent, Minako smiled into the kiss, but when she went to pull away she felt Rei nip at her bottom lip playfully and instead of separating from her, Minako found her mouth trying to follow Rei's together again.

Nice touch.

When Rei's eyes opened, they were more than just a little foggy and Minako had to admit that this girl was more than she had expected. There was something beneath the surface, even though it was masked by a shield of inexperience, there was a passion to her that was burning and what thrilled Minako the most was that it was burning for her.

Or at least it would be from now on.

Minako smirked, letting go of the fistfuls of Rei's vest she had pilfered and smoothing down the fabric so that it didn't look so rumpled.

"Wel…" Minako found herself having to clear her throat before she could get her voice to be even again, "Well, Casanova, I believe you've left your mark. Maybe we'll meet again sometime."

With that, Mina leaned up and kissed Rei's forehead before turning on her heel and walking back up the steps into her family home. She only spared one look back towards Rei and then she was gone, leaving only the vacant space she had previously occupied for Rei to stare at as she was left to sort herself out.

* * *

"Pain removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul."

-C.S. Lewis-

(1898 – 1963)

A/N: I just have to mention that the song Minako is singing towards the end is Sarah Mclachlan's "When She Loved Me" and anyone can find it on youtube if they are interested in listening to the original version of it. Sorry for the long break between updates. Thank you all for reading and I hope everyone liked it. Please leave a review when you are finished to let me know what you thought of it. Thanks everyone!


	5. Color My Eyes Red

_**Chapter Five: Color My Eyes Red**_

Minako rubbed the sleep from her eyes and let them readjust momentarily before she continued through the unlit kitchen of their townhouse. Her bare feet meandered lazily across the hardwood floor, the coldness against them not enough to fully wake her up either. It felt like a steam roller had hit her and then backed up to repeat the abuse. She had slept four hours maybe, if that, and it had been a sleep hAunted by beautiful amethyst eyes and a lack of rest.

Minako didn't know what was worse: losing sleep over a familiar stranger she might never see again or just losing sleep period. For now she had to say both were tied, but that might change soon.

Everything seemed to eventually.

For example, usually when Minako crept in after hours, she was quite often met with a rather infuriated version of her Aunt, but when she had come home last night after leaving Rei there had been no one in the house and so far, it had remained that way.

Fusako Aino was gone, for whatever the reason Minako didn't know, but she was loving it!!

As an understated tribute to her small victory, Minako reached over to the counter and pulled a chocolate chip cookie from a jar hidden behind the towel rack there. These were her favorite which was why she bribed Michelle to buy them and stash them away in secret when she went grocery shopping. She hadn't had one in such a long time, so long that she (tried to convince herself) had almost forgotten what they tasted like.

Minako had the beloved delicacy halfway to her mouth when an unexpected voice interrupted her and almost caused her to drop the precious treat on the floor.

"Funny, she doesn't miss you when you're gone either."

Minako jumped in the darkness as the white cat landed up onto the counter gracefully, his light fur catching the glow of the moonlight outside making him one of the only things in the dimly lit room that Minako could see clearly.

Comfortably situated, Artemis laid down and crossed one paw over the other, casually staring up at his mistress.

"And here I thought that was odd, but I guess it's mutual so no worries there." With a shallow breath, Artemis slid his back legs sideways so that he was laying more comfortably on his side as he continued, "I also suppose it was wrong of me to assume that you were the only misanthropic member of this household."

Minako scowled at him around a mouthful of cookie, having finally gotten it to her mouth and stuffed it mostly in, "Do you ever sleep, Artemis?"

Artemis's features took on a genuinely worried look, "Do you?"

"Not with you watching over me every night like something out of _Basic Instinct_." Minako quipped, her scowl still in place as she finished the cookie off.

"Well, I wouldn't have to if you hadn't built up a reputation for yourself as a nightly runaway." Artemis returned.

"What? I didn't realize going out in the middle of the night where fighting youma isn't concerned was something you frowned upon." Minako walked over to the sink and washed the cookie crumbs from her hands then dried them on one of the towels hiding the cookie jar. "But now that I know, I

will make a mental note to lock the cat door when I go out at night from now on."

Artemis sighed, "I am being serious, Mina. You have a responsibility to the world as Sailor V and also to yourself, but since we've been back in Japan you've been shrinking those duties. After the hospital scare, I am not sure you can keep this up anymore."

To his surprise, Minako raised her eyes to meet his own and buried in those light blue depths he could see a sparkle of genuine fear.

And it honestly scared him.

Artemis knew this girl, had trained, had guided her to this point and so he knew that after everything they had been through, it took a lot to scare her. And the fact that her life may be in danger, not from any scum sucking alien monster, but from an illness; a foe she couldn't kill, was the most frightening thing either one of them had encountered in this lifetime.

Finally, Minako looked away from her guardian and down towards the shaded granite countertop where her hands had come to rest. In the mixture of star and street light coming from the high windows, the skin of her arms almost looked grey.

"I promise not to neglect my duties as Sailor Venus anymore, Artemis, if that's what you're worried about then you can stop worrying now because as soon as a new threat presents itself I will be back in action again."

"Mina, you know I never doubted you wouldn't. You've always done your duty, you've just been a little lax on training these past few months is all, but what I am really worried about is your well being not your performance."

Minako gathered up all of her courage for the lie she was about to tell him and caught Artemis' worried eyes, keeping it with a fake smile, "I will be fine, Artemis. Honestly, you're such a worry wart, no wonder you don't have a life."

Artemis rolled his eyes at that and smirked, relieved that his charge seemed to be back to her old good natured self again, "Well you know, I would be able to have more of a life if I wasn't fated to spend mine guiding yours."

Minako waved her hand dismissively at him and winked, "Oh, low blow, Artie."

At that, an uncharacteristic scowl came over Artemis' features. "You know, I hate it when you try to be cute."

"Oh, only for you, Artie, only for you." Minako got out in between giggles, suddenly feeling the craving for another cookie.

As Minako reached into the cookie jar and pulled out another one of the delicious treats she heard Artemis snicker from behind her. Turning on him with a comical venom, she clutched the cookie protectively to her chest.

"And just what's so funny?"

"Don't eat too many of those, Minako." The cat said, trying to hide his smirk, "Your sailor fuka is endowed by your powers to magically fit your form as you grow up and change, but there is only so much magic in them."

Minako put her other hand on her hip as she took a rebellious pose in front of him. Staring down at her guardian menacingly, "And just what are you implying, hmmmmmmm?"

Artemis suddenly had a great deal of sympathy for the birds he stalked across fences and rooftops imagining that this must be how they felt when he stood above them just before the chase began. Gathering his courage and deciding on bravery and possibly martyrdom, he sat up and stayed right where he was on the counter.

"Do you remember when your Aunt measured you for a dress design her company was going to put into production last month?"

Minako nodded, her eyes narrowing down at the furball as she wondered abstractly if her guardian was trying to be brave or if he was just stupider than he looked.

"Well," Artemis paused wondering whether or not he should continue along this line of humor or not and whether anyone in the future might miss him should his charge decide to commit homicide, before he decided to continue, "she said after you were out of the room that she hadn't seen that much tape off the roll since they reupholstered that thick leather chair in your father's study."

"WHAT??"

Oh, bad move.

"You know I was just kidding, Mina…I mean she did say that, but this is your Aunt we are talking about and you know how she-"

Artemis' plea for mercy fizzled out as he jumped off of the counter, just narrowly missing a copper pan being thrown at his head. He landed on the floor and turned around only to see his charge armed with a skillet from the cookery wrack above the sink ready for another attack. If it were under other circumstances, Artemis was sure he would be very proud of how quickly Mina was ready to fire off another attack so soon after the last one had botched itself and also of how accurate her aim had become in the time since their last battle against an enemy, but somehow he didn't have that same appreciation while he was the target of her newly honed skills.

"Alright, Mina! I give!" Artemis shouted in defeat just as his charge was winding up for her next great throw.

Her arm stopped in mid air above her head and a thoughtful expression came over Minako's face as she halted her attack, "What was that, I'm afraid I didn't hear you, you'll have to speak up Artie."

"You have got to be kidding me!" He returned irately.

All of Artemis' hopes dropped as a demonic grin replaced the thoughtful expression on Minako's face.

"I'm afraid not, Artie, besides at your age you should know better than to call any woman let alone the goddess of love fat!!"

"I DID NOT CALL YOU THAT!" Artemis yelped as the skillet came flying his way and he dodged under the dining room table for cover.

"Excuses, excuses." Mina chirped cheerily as she skipped over to a drawer by the refrigerator and pulled out a wooden spoon. "You really should apologize, Artemis. I seem to be feeling very in the mood for cat snack right about now."

_I bet Luna doesn't have to put up with anything like this, _Artemis grumbled internally as he raised himself up on all fours and moved out into the open again.

"Alright, I am sorry if I somehow implied that you, Aino Minako, the goddess of love, could have put on weight." Artemis apologized while still trying to maintain his dignity and hoping she didn't catch on, "Are you satisfied?"

Minako took the spoon and used it to tap her chin as if she were really in thought, "I suppose I might be."

"You might be?"

Minako looked over at her guardian as he gave her a dubious look. "I might be persuaded to forgive you that awful remark on one condition."

Artemis sighed. He was really in for it now.

"And what would that be?"

Minako's eyes sparkled in the moonlight coming through the bay windows, a mischievous glint shining in those blue orbs, "You are so never going to trust me again after this."

Artemis swallowed nervously as his mistress approached him. To be perfectly honest, he wasn't so sure if he would trust her with his life right now or not.

* * *

Early mornings had never been a bother to Rei. She had been an early riser for as long as she could remember because there were always chores to be done and no other time but the mornings to do them in.

But waking up for Rei this time was going to be Hell on Earth. Correction, she was in Hell, more than usual.

"Rei, my child, you're distracted and nothing good ever comes out of distraction from where one's main focus should be."

Jimmu Nisei sat perched atop a strategically placed log in the woods behind their temple watching as Rei attempted to balance on one foot upon one wooden stake in a large square of those same stakes that had been set up specifically for this purpose.

"Spiritual health, mental health, physical health, they are all one, Rei, all one." To demonstrate what he meant the old man laced his fingers together and held them up off of his lap even though his granddaughter was concentrating anything but him, "Balance, balance is crucial in every aspect of our day to day lives. What do you think happens if these three things are out of balance, Rei? Rei? REI!!"

The old man's worried voice echoed as Rei tumbled off of her high perch and landed painfully on her side in the bed of flat wooden stakes. Trying to move, she groaned and rubbed at the places in her side that were aching and would probably be bruised by tonight.

"Rei."

The old man had hopped off of the log and came to kneel carefully beside his granddaughter, checking her over for any injuries worse than a mere scrape or bruise, for those she had to learn how to handle. Nodding to himself that she was fine, he reached out and tweaked her nose comically.

"Ow! Grandpa!" Rei chided him, rubbing at her unharmed nose in an attempt to heal her pride succumbing to the childish gesture.

"Oh, lighten up, Rei." The old man gave her a hearty laugh as he moved aside so she could get back up, "Even your mother knew that a little pain is good for the soul."

"Which is your rationalization for why she married Dad, is that right?" Rei quipped, forgetting about her bruises and enjoying the moment.

"Now, you're catching on, my child." Her grandfather replied with a wink.

With an agility that was unheard of in a man his age, Jimmu leapt up onto one of the stakes, catching himself and holding himself upright on one foot as he raised his hands above his head and slowly moved them down to a triangle position in front of his chest never once losing his balance as he did so.

"You see?" He said to Rei, his eyes closed in serene concentration, "It's all about balance—HEY!"

Before he could comprehend what was going on, Rei had landed on a wooden stake next to him and before the old man could open his mouth to protest, she had jumped up onto his shoulders, balancing with one foot on each shoulder as the shaking man now struggled to maintain the equilibrium that had been so easy for him before.

"Is this what you were talking about, Grandpa?" Rei asked him, straightening up and putting a hand on his head to steady herself, "Hey, I can see my room from here? Hm, I never knew my window looked that dirty from the outside."

"HINO REIKO, GET OFF OF ME THIS INSTANT!" The old man shouted in vain, trying not to move, but shaking anyway as his ancient muscles tried to retain their previous harmony with the added weight.

"In fact it's not just my window, it's all the windows on the backside of the house. Grandpa, they look horrible." Rei added trying for all she was worth not to laugh at the proud old man's predicament.

She was almost sure he would never doubt her sense of balance again, when her grandfather decided to remind her why elders were considered wise and the young were always considered foolish.

Slowly, Jimmu moved the leg he had raised in the air behind him and lowered the ball of his foot onto the flat surface of one of the wooden stakes he knew was there without having to look for it. Then without a word, he reached up and gave his granddaughter's ankles a push, but before she could grab his head to stop herself from falling, he moved back quickly placing all of his weight back on the foot he had put behind him.

Rei, unable to keep her current position, fell forward and landed in an unceremonious heap in front of her grandfather, the old man now firmly planted and in the same calming pose he had held before she had unbalanced him.

Rei groaned again in pain as her sore side protested against another rough landing, but it wasn't just her side this time. Reaching up, the girl felt her cheek and when she pulled her hand back she was irked to see that her fingers were coated in a light sheen of her own blood.

Great. She really was in Hell now.

It was then that her grandfather leaned forward, wagging his finger at her as he scolded her.

"You see, Rei?" He said, with a small laugh and a victorious grin, "Balance _is_ everything."

* * *

St. Gerard's School for Boys was the companion school to TA Girls Academy and the two were similar in many respects.

Aside from being mutually catholic institutions, both made their students wear these ridiculously trumped up uniforms which Hisao despised over anything he'd ever been forced to wear. They even trumped the stupid little tuxedo his mother had rented for him to wear to his Aunt's wedding.

And that was definitely saying something.

Besides the stupid uniforms, both schools were run by men and women of the catholic clergy while occasionally hiring people from the outside to teach. Usually conservative minded idiots who still needed to learn a thing or two, but were employed to teach instead. Hisao thought there was something seriously wrong with that arrangement, but it wasn't worth his energy to question it.

Leaning back in his seat, he twirled the little wooden pendant on his keychain around and around out of sheer boredom. Stopping to give the thing an odd luck that it might not have deserved, Hisao ran his thumb over the prayer carved into the wooden surface. It was an Omamori, an amulet his sister had picked up for him after she visited the Hikwawa Shrine on Cherry Hill with their parents. Hisao had refused to go. He hated being forced to go and say prayers to the Kami for God knew what that would never be answered. It was a monumental waste of time on his part and he knew it.

But the amulet Mika had brought him was apparently supposed to ward off bad luck (as if the Catholics didn't have enough half a dozen prayers or saints that were supposed to do the same thing). Hisao had to admit that if this putrid little thing had come from anyone but his sister then he would have thrown it back in their faces and told them to go fuck themselves with it.

But he couldn't do that to Mika. She was still young enough to retain the childhood innocence and naïve trust that he had lost and somewhat regretted losing in the first place. It gave them a bond together, making him feel an obligation to protect her from the world he had come to so hate and despise. Nothing was good about this life and when you weren't bored was the only time it would bite you in the butt to make things interesting.

And that was only on the good days.

"You look thoughtful, Shimotsumaki." One of the boys around him quipped at his expense.

"Go to hell, Edo."

"Gladly," The boy returned as he lifted a small golden flask from underneath the table, careful to keep it between him and Hisao so that one of the monitors patrolling the library wouldn't catch on, "But you first, Shimotsumaki, eh?"

Hisao growled, but said nothing in protest as he grabbed the flask out of his friend's hands and took a swig of the precious sake hidden inside only to find that it was of horrendous quality.

"Jesus, Edo, where do you get this stuff? Do you brew it in your backyard or something?" Hisao accused as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and glared at the fellow junior beside him.

Edo was about to give his rebuttal, but quickly closed his mouth as one of the upper classmen student monitors walked passed their table, giving the two boys a stern look though Edo was sure that he couldn't see the flask as Hisao's body was blocking it from the back. Once the monitor was out of view, Edo reached over and yanked the flask protectively out of Hisao's grasp.

"Damn it, Shimotsumaki, could you be any louder?" Edo sneered before bending down to take a long drink from the flask, "Ah, this stuff is great. My uncles in Okinawa brew the stuff and sell it at their market. They send me some every year along with a bottle of Awamori they tend to hide for me until they come to visit for the New Year. Uncle Toji used to work at Gekkeikan so he really knows how to make this stuff strong. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Only if you like the feeling of sandpaper rushing down your throat."

"Fuck you, Shimotsumaki, this stuff is Grade A." Edo defended as he raised the flask once more to his lips.

"Hardly." Hisao cleared his throat and stared down at the calculus book that had been laying open to the same page in front of him untouched for the past twenty minutes.

"You going to actually work on that thing or what?" Edo asked noticing where his friend's unfocused gaze had fallen. "You sure you're alright, man? You've been spacing out a lot today."

"Jesus, don't get all sentimental on me, Edo, or do you like being that way so other guys can get all up in you easier?"

Hisao didn't have time to celebrate his little victory before a fist came crashing into his solar plexus and he fell backwards out of his chair.

Maybe it would be slightly more advantageous to him if he were a masochist.

* * *

Minako lunged forward, sliding into a squat as she caught the ball with her forearms and spiked it back over the net towards the now very attentive other team. A volleyball court was a battlefield that Sailor V was guaranteed to dominate even in her civilian form and it was also a battle she always took seriously regardless if she had to fight it most predominately in gym class these days.

And so began day one at TA Private Girls School.

Her Aunt hadn't been home the night before and now she knew why. Apparently, immediate admission into a prestigious school on short notice cost a beautiful independent woman at least one night in bed. And to think, Fusako was the one always scolding Minako on her so called lewd behavior. Well, Minako had never slept with someone to get something and she never would if she had anything to do with it. When she was with someone, she was with them because she wanted to be and it would never be any different. What her Aunt did was her own business and she never planned to comment on it, but as Sailor V, she knew better than to think that every act committed in a war of words was preplanned.

Minako smirked.

Gym class was her first period, another perk her Aunt had scored for her: she had been able to choose her class line up from a list of times on the condition that she attended them whenever they were in session, but that was expected of every student.

The day had started nonchalant enough. At first, when she had entered the school, she had gotten a lot of strange looks (since she wasn't wearing one of her usual disguises being that hats and sunglasses weren't allowed at a catholic institution) as if she looked familiar but no one wanted to come right out and ask if she was the famous Aino Minako they all had CDs of. The odd stares and common whispers had continued until she and her fellow students had all shown up at the gym for first period and Coach Ilko had introduced her to her other classmates.

"Class, gather around." Ilko dropped the bag of assorted volleyballs she had been carrying behind her onto the floor and placed her now empty hands on her waist. "I have a new student that I would like you all to meet."

Minako was smiling on the outside but on the inside, she was cringing. Slowly, she stood up from the group of students sitting on the gym floor and came up to stand beside her instructor at her nod.

"Class, this is Aino Minako and sh—"

The teacher lost control of the room and momentarily of her equilibrium as the students on the floor all bolted up and screamed excitedly. Minako was rushed almost immediately by a throng of clapping and smiling teenagers tripping over themselves as they squealed out excited exclamations and stuttered greetings.

"Oh, my God, Aino Minako the idol?!!"

"I've seen you on TV—"

"I just loved your song _C'est la Vie_. I have it on both its own single and as a remastered track on your last CD—"

"Minako, can you autograph my hand—"

"No, no sign my knee—"

"No, no sign my—"

"SILENCE!"

Coach Ilko's frustrated voice rang out through the gymnasium, echoing off of the walls followed shortly by a whistle being blown.

"Now, everyone will return to their seats on the floor immediately or I will put you all in detention scrubbing floors for a month!!"

When no one moved, the woman's flustered countenance shriveled up into an ugly imitation of a face, "I SAID SIT!!"

This time the result was unanimous as every girl, but Minako immediately returned to their side of the gym while Minako slowly sunk to her knees, stunned to silence by how quickly things had changed in the last few minutes. One minute she was herself, the next she was swarmed by a group of screaming girls (not the worst thing that could have happened to her by the way) followed shortly by again being left all by herself.

Fate was certainly a bitch with a sense of humor she mused, as she folded her legs to one side of her and leaned back against her hands, the vast majority of her classmates still watching her all starry eyed as their teacher continued to reprimand them.

She wasn't the type to disappoint her fans. With a grin she tilted her head towards a pretty red headed girl and winked. Not to her surprise, the girl swooned and blushed and it looked to Minako that she might just have found the fun in this little arrangement her Aunt and father had gone to such lengths to put together for her.

After that little mishap at the beginning of class, Coach Ilko had set about personally choosing the teams for volleyball. Minako was on the A team and one of the first students picked which was why Minako liked to think that all of the other students had looked so sad about being on different teams.

Alright she was being self centered and she knew it, but why shouldn't she be? She had taken her love of music and the annoying voice lessons her mother had made her take as a child all so she could be well rounded and had made something of herself at an age where most other girls were still in school with no idea of what they wanted to do with their lives.

"Hey, Minako, heads up!"

Minako broke out of her thoughts suddenly as she noticed the ball spiraling over the net towards her.

"I got it!" She called out as she backtracked and used her folded hands to knock the ball back into play on the other team's side.

The players on her side erupted into applause and Coach Ilko had to blow her whistle again to get everyone to quiet down. Minako smiled on the inside and took a loose stance, ready to move as the ball was tossed back to the opposing team's server so they could attempt to return the favor of Minako's last move.

Bring it on, Minako jeered in her head as she shifted her weight from foot to foot to keep herself light on her feet and ready to move. She could take them all on…and probably win as well. The ball came back over to their side and in her typical steal-the-show manner, Minako leaned backwards and slammed the ball back over the net where it was fumbled with and fell to the point awarding a point to her team.

After that, Minako truly was on top of the world as her fellow teammates cheered for her. In all honesty, she hadn't played volleyball on a team since she was in primary school, but it seemed that didn't stop her from having a natural talent at the sport. As the winning point was called, several of the other girls on her team crowded her, slapping her on the back and praising her latest move while the other team sulked on their side of the net (though some of them were surprisingly clapping for Minako as well).

Aiko Shizuki pushed a shorter girl in the outer ring surrounding Minako out of her way before siding her way through the other girls confidently. Once the girls ahead of her had cleared a small path so that she could advance forward, Aiko could see Minako and the girl who was shaking her hand and babbling on at her energetically as Minako smiled and nodded.

"So you really did get the chance to tour with your first album to Europe and you actually lived in England for a while?"

"Yep, for about a year or so." Minako answered cheerily, wondering absently why the hand that had been holding hers for the last five minutes was gripping her so tightly and when it would let go. She would never let anyone know it, because it really was none of their business, but she could get claustrophobic when it came to people and right now she was beginning to feel it just a bit.

Chizuko Oneda smiled dreamily for about the twentieth time that morning and sighed. "That would be so cool!"

Minako nodded and widened her smile.

"So, why did you decide to come to TA for your education of all places?" Chizuko asked, still holding onto her hand.

Minako was about to open her mouth to answer when a voice from the outside of the group interrupted her.

"Can't you see that you're boring the girl out of her mind, Oneda? Give her some room to breathe, will you?"

The owner of the voice moved closer and Minako noticed that the girl she had been talking too almost immediately dropped her hand as though she had been burned, bowing slightly to the other girl as she backed up. Minako could sense some trepidation in the girl's actions that seemed somewhat out of place and it caused a pretty frown to replace the smile she had been wearing.

The newcomer was about Minako's height, an attractive girl with shoulder length black hair and sharp brown eyes. She held herself with and air that Minako had gotten used to during outings with her family and their higher affiliated friends so she was not about to bet that this girl didn't come from one of the richest families at TA, maybe a legacy family perhaps like her own.

Minako's own family affiliations should have made her feel right at home around this girl, but her nature made her weary of anyone who set themselves above the crowd, including to some extent, herself.

The girl stepped forward, her hand outstretched, "My name is Shizuki Aiko and my father is an attaché to the Prime Minister."

Minako plastered another fake smile across her face and took the hand offered to her, "Aino Minako."

"Yes, I know. I've heard of you like I am sure every other teen girl in this school has, but I was fairly sure you hadn't heard of me and you should." The other girl gloated, letting go of Minako's hand, but not moving her arm away from her side.

Minako let the smile drop, replaced by a neutral expression. There was something about this girl's words and the tone she had said them in that made her weary of her, but before she could even think of how she wanted to tell the girl what to do with her overzealous attitude, Chizuko moved up beside her again.

When she spoke her voice held a timidness that it had lacked during their former conversation and Minako wondered briefly what made her so afraid of this Aiko girl.

"Aiko's father owns a controlling interest of a quarter of the businesses in Tokyo. Her family is really well know in certain circles-"

"That's quite enough, Oneda, I think she will come to realize in time that a friendship with me may prove advantageous in time, even for a famous musician such as yourself."

As the last of the words left her mouth, Aiko raised her chin a slight fraction so that her head was now a little higher than the idol's and it made her blood boil. Why that little twerp!! Minako didn't care if her father was the Emperor, how dare she act so high and mighty and hold her family position over Minako and the other girls like that. Minako's blue eyes narrowed as she straightened and pulled her shoulders back to a comfortable but audacious pose.

But again, before Minako could proceed to tell the other girl off, a girl with auburn pigtails she had talked to at the beginning of the hour grabbed her hand and fixed her with an enthusiastic grin as she directed the idol's attention towards her.

"I can't believe we're going to be classmates!! Aino Minako and I, Ah, just wait until I tell my sister who I played volleyball with today!" Hatsu Urameshi screamed, shaking her hand excitedly as she jumped up and down for a couple minutes.

The neutral expression left Minako's face and an indulgent smile took its place, "Yes, that will be exciting for you. I am sure she will be envious."

"Are you kidding??" Hatsu replied, her smile widening and her tone going up in volume. "She's like your biggest fan!"

I seem to have a lot of those lately, Minako mused in her head, though that thought quickly faded as the high cheek boned face of Aiko Shizuki popped back into her mind and she spun around to tell her off, but the girl was nowhere to be found. Aiko Shizuki had left the room.

* * *

Rei had arrived at school on time like she always did without much thought as to what the day might have ahead for her. Since this morning and her pathetic loss to her grandfather, the girl's concerns were more grounded in the land of 'here and now' rather than in the land of 'what if'. It was for this reason that the usually observant miko chose to ignore the whispers floating around her as she walked through the grounds towards her locker in the main building, though she did take the trouble to note that there was more buzz around the small campus than on a typical morning, but she didn't let it bother her….at first.

At around 8:12 AM, when Rei first set foot in the main building of TA Girls' School, she wasn't at concerned with the rumors racing through the halls around her ears.

However, at 8:14 AM, the world and Japan itself were very close to fiery Armageddon as Rei began to get extremely annoyed when the girl who lockered next to her and her locker partner started chatting animatedly about some unnamed, famous new student that had taken TA by storm.

At 8:15 AM, Rei was just about ready to slam her locker door shut and tell the two girls beside her who had just started screaming and jumping around excitedly to shut up when a pair of arms snaked their way around her chest, pinning her arms to her sides in an awkward, backwards hug.

"I am so sorry, Rei."

"Keiko?" Rei asked, dumbfounded. She tried to turn around, but her girlfriend's arms around her kept her firmly in place. "What are you sorry about?"

"Yesterday." The girl admitted. Rei couldn't tell for sure but she thought the confession sounded almost tearful, "I overreacted, please…please forgive me."

Finally the arms around her loosened slightly enough for them to fall down and settle around Rei's waist as she turned around to meet the other girl.

"I…I am the one who should be apologizing to you." Rei confessed, "I don't know what I said to offend you, but I didn't mean it to hurt you like it did."

Keiko nodded and sniffed, "I know, I just took it so hard because you were being all serious and secretive. You get like that sometimes."

"Do I?" Rei asked, raising an eyebrow, knowing full well that she did it all of the time.

Keiko smiled as she looked up into Rei's eyes, noting the unusual playfulness dancing in those violet depths. "My, my, my Hino Reiko, what has gotten into you today?"

"I don't know, I guess seeing you just had a positive effect on me."

Rei punctuated her words by leaning forward and capturing her girlfriend's lips with her own. Keiko startled at the unexpected move, but quickly relaxed and returned the touch. Feeling braver still, Rei tentatively licked at Keiko's bottom lip coaxing her to open her mouth slightly so she could deepen the kiss.

Silently, they parted, remembering the atmosphere they where in, but as they separated Keiko couldn't seem to keep the dreamy smile off of her face. This was new.

"I could get used to this every morning." She said lowering her eyebrows and leaning in seductively, "I'll just have to piss you off in the afternoons more often."

It was then that Keiko noticed the scraped bruise forming a perfect circle on Rei's right cheek and she gasped.

"Rei, what on Earth did you do to you face?" Keiko's worried voice broke her out of her momentarily euphoria and brought her back to reality.

Rei frowned and her eyes lost their playfulness as a dark look took them over before she turned her attention back to her locker, shutting the door and turning the dial, "I fell this morning. It's not that big of a deal."

Keiko sighed. She knew she had just been shut out again. She knew Rei was a private person, that wasn't news to anyone, but she had hoped that the enigmatic girl would have been a little more willing to let her in by now, after all, she was her girlfriend. Weren't most significant others supposed to share stuff like that? Keiko had never hesitated to do so in any of her previous relationships so why should this one be any different for her and Rei?

Keiko blew frustrated air out from between her lips and leaned back, putting some space between herself and her newest girlfriend, "You're doing it again."

Rei looked up from her locker door, annoyed again, "What are you talking about now?"

"You." Keiko stuck an accusing finger in her face, "You and your weird closed off excuse for an emotional wall. You are emotionally incapable that's what you are! Why do you have to keep doing that, shutting me out and getting all defensive every time a person tries to talk to you?"

"Why do you care?" Rei snarled protectively.

Keiko scoffed, insulted, "Would you listen to yourself? I never thought I would say this Rei, but what the other girls say about you is true, you really are a bitch."

And with that the girl turned and stomped off in the opposite direction. Groaning, Rei leaned her forehead against her locker door, willing the cold painted steel to help take her mind off of what had just happened, but even though she was psychic, her mental abilities were apparently not great enough to bend inanimate objects to her will…yet.

Damn.

Well, let's see, what else could she possibly do to make her morning suck worse? She might as well show up naked to class without her homework. It would certainly add the piece de resistance to the start of what she was sure would be a horrendous day.

Opening her eyes as the second warning bell went off for first period, Rei stood up and straightened her shoulders. Well, she might as well get it over with. Misery not only loves company, but it usually prefers it to be on time.

Good thing being on time for her meant being always early, Rei mused.

* * *

"What part of give me your lunch money or bite the dust is so fucking hard to understand?!"

The younger student cowered against the wall as a fist slammed into the bricks beside his head for emphasis. As the owner of the already bruising fist began pull it back for a better aimed shot, the freshman boy, threw up his hands and squealed in a cracking voice as he reached into his pockets and emptied them onto the pavement. The fist seemed to stop midair as its owner seemed to consider this new development before it reared back again threatening like a battering ram being held at bay.

"Is that all of it?" Hisao grunted out at the smaller kid cowering against the wall in front of him. "Well, is it, kid, huh?!"

The freshman nodded quickly and Hisao moved his arm to let the kid pass as he scurried away, down one of the back alleyways between the school and the dividing wall that surrounded the campus, separating it from the rest of the city.

"Well, that was hardly worth the trouble." He grumbled as he bent down to collect the measly amount he had scrounged off of the younger boy. Freshmen were getting poorer and poorer these days either that or they were hiding more and more of their money in their lockers. Hisao made a mental note to slip back onto the grounds that night and do a little inventory of his classmates' holdings to see just how much he was being held out on.

Clearing his throat, Hisao reached into the pocket of his school uniform and pulled out a folded, crumpled cardboard box with three or so cigarettes left in it. Lazily he fished a lighter out of his other pocket, having to click it more than once because the damn thing was almost out of fluid before he actually got a flame that was substantial enough to light the cigarette he had stuffed between his lips.

After a few experimental puffs to make sure the light would still go, Hisao pulled the cheap tobacco stick out of his mouth and let out a long exhale. God that was good. He had almost hit the point this morning that he was just about ready to kill one of his buddies for a smoke not caring that any of his teachers may catch him. A good solid drag on such a shit filled day should be worst at least two afternoons in detention for it.

It wasn't Hisao's fault that the Catholic Church was afraid of smoke. It must be a fear brought over from all of the woman they had burned as witches in the past and Muslim places of worship in the holy lands and such.

Distractedly, he took another long drag off of his cigarette in the mid afternoon daylight. Unbeknownst to him, in the janitorial basement and the tunnels adjoining which ran beneath the wall he was leaning against, a great menace was lurking, stalking him as much as the world in which he was living.

It took note of this ignorant, unsuspecting human whose moral compass refused to point due north and it smiled. This boy was what they needed. His heart was full of a criticism and distrust of his planet and its future accompanied by a general hatred of his entire race that could easily be turned to their advantage.

And just like that, the newly reawakened Dark Kingdom had its first human accomplice in its plot to destroy all life on Earth and take over the universe anew.

* * *

"So you've met Rika Katsumoto personally?" Hatsu gush, her eyes practically as big as spotlight lamps.

"Yeah, we met once on tour. My agent introduced me to her." Minako replied with a demure and deceptive smile.

"She's so cool!!!" Chizuko chimed in.

How they had gotten on the topic of her main rival in the music world during the walk home from school she wasn't quite sure, but what Minako did know was that she was not enjoying where this pointless conversation was going, not one bit.

"Her last album _One Minute of Bliss_ was so inspiring. It's no small wonder that it was at the top of the charts for twelve consecutive weeks." Hatsu spouted off, raising her folded hands in front of her and looking up at the blue cloudless sky above their heads with stars in her eyes.

Minako cringed inwardly. In all her years, Minako would never have pegged herself as an overly bad sportsman, in fact, acceptance and fair play were things she prided herself on both in life and in music. Aino Minako was many things that were not flattering, but let it never be said that she couldn't handle a little friendly competition and do it fairly.

But this conversation was getting to her. She had nothing against her fellow idol personally, it was just that where both of their names topped the charts of the nation's most beloved hits and were brought up in the same circles there was bound to be friction. And it didn't help that both she and Rika played into what the world thought their relationship towards one another should be.

So it probably wasn't the fault of these girls that they believed what they did based on what they heard from the press and saw on TV. Hell, if anything it was as much Minako's fault or maybe more so than it was the press.

As Minako came out of her musings, she noticed Aiko staring at her out of the corner of her eye. Ugh, not that girl again. What was with her anyway? She snubbed her verbally any chance she got and yet every time Minako wasn't looking (or pretended she wasn't) the girl's eyes would land on her…almost shyly…

It was then that Minako's eyes widened as the realization put her brain into belated overload…

She had a crush. Minako was the object of a crush of the most popular girl at TA Girls' School. A very popular otherwise straight girl, that was.

Minako smiled slyly. Should she have some fun with this? No, no, far be it from the goddess of love to take advantage of the affection of a heart in love….but in lust was another thing entirely.

Hmmmm…dare she give into Aiko? She'd been alone for a long time. Minako looked over at Aiko causing the girl to look away from her, but she didn't care. No, she couldn't. Whatever the girl's intentions, the goddess knew better than to pursue a relationship with her. Her thoughts traveled back to the events of the previous night and the violet eyes that had caused her breath to catch in her chest and the novice lips that had engulfed her own in a fire she couldn't resist.

"So Minako, I don't mean to sound repetitive, but you haven't answered my question from earlier yet." Chizuko piped up curiously, drawing all three girls' attention back to the idol, "Why did you decide to come to TA?"

The goddess of love cleared her throat as she grudgingly pushed her thoughts of the mysterious violet eyed girl to the back of her mind and smiled.

"My father's parents were Catholic and my aunt attended this school when she was my age. So it just seemed like the natural choice for me, I guess." Minako answered easily.

"Ah, a legacy family," Hatsu chimed in. "I am a legacy as well. My mother and grandmother both attended TA when they were my age. "

Minako widened her false smile, but a scoff from behind her caused her to drop it. She hadn't been the only one to notice Aiko's little reaction, both Chizuko and Hatsu had picked up on the gesture as well, but had chosen to ignore it as they usually did with Aiko's small gestures. She was their leader and they just didn't know what to say to her when they were not asked to speak so they left it to the silence to speak for them.

The small group kept walking towards the private district. As they came within a couple blocks of her townhouse, the group stopped in front of a large mansion (even by most of their standards) that was separated from the sidewalk and the road by a tall stone wall. An initial inlaid in gold above the front gate denoted the surname of the home's distinguished owners.

"This is my stop." Aiko announced, stiffening slightly. "I will see you all tomorrow."

"Bye Aiko." Chizuko and Hatsu echoed in unison, then the former added, "Get some sleep tonight. Remember we have a quiz is Hiedi sensei's class tomorrow."

Aiko just smirked haughtily and then looked at Minako, "Goodnight, Aino. It was fun."

Minako rolled her eyes and decided not to even glorify Aiko's parting with a response and just continued walking down the sidewalk alone.

"Minako, wait, don't you want us to walk you home too?" Chizuko asked, taking a step forward in surprise at being left.

"No thank you, Chizuko," Minako replied as she turned around to face them with a soft legitimate smile this time, "I appreciate the offer, but it's not far from here. I can make it on my own."

"Okay, bye Minako! It was a pleasure to have met you and we will see you tomorrow!" Hatsu replied appearing next to a very bemused Chizuko with an enthusiastic wave.

Minako returned the gesture energetically and then turned back around to head for home. Over her head the sky was splitting off into shades of orange, pink, and violet as the evening sun set, but what she nor anyone else could have noticed was the blood red pair of eyes invisibly sizing up the Earth for conquest from the horizon.

* * *

"There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves."

-Frank Herbert-

(1920 – 1986)

_**A/N:**_ Hello all! I got some questions concerning Hisao in a few of the reviews left for the last chapter and all I can say is watch out for that boy, he's going to be a rising star (as you can all probably tell by how this chapter ended). ;) I hope you all liked it and please leave a comment telling me what you thought of this chapter. Thanks again for reading and reviewing!


	6. Meteor Shower

_**Chapter Six: Meteor Shower**_

It was amazing what a walk home could do for a person and at the same time how little it could help at all. During the short two block walk to her townhouse, Minako's thoughts had been plagued by violet eyes and a memory of the fire in them so vivid that she wouldn't be able to forget them if she tried. A short mental consensus with herself has led her to the Nakamura Sports Center to work off some of the tension that was beginning to build in her nerves. She didn't know why, but today was turning into a bumper day.

The large glassed in courts doubled as a tennis as well as a volleyball gaming area. The sides of the nets even had handles so that someone could raise each side of the net to adjust it for a game of volleyball or two. Technically, someone could switch the nets if they wanted, but Minako didn't care today. She wasn't up for all of that fuss, not tonight.

The little green net had been raised and the volleyballs had been checked out of the storage closet. Operation relieve monumental stress was underway and Operation get her life out of the gutter was off to a good start. Minako took a step back and surveyed the empty court and all the places her opponents would be if she had any. Taking a deep breath, she imagined all of the people in her life taking up positions on the other side of the net to oppose her and set her features in accordance with a determined frown as she gave the ball a mighty smack.

The right handed serve sent the ball to the center of the other court where she imagined a hollow image of her father trying to block it and failing miserably. Inside of her, a glimmer of self pride rose up and was quickly extinguished by feelings of another kind.

Guilt.

Self loathing.

Shame.

They sat on top of Minako's chest and festered there like a bad case of heart burn, each one individually flaring up above the rest occasionally to cause her more pain. The girl grimaced as the ball fell through what would have been her father's head and instead of imagining the stern side of him that had come to visit her just a few days previous only to tell her that he had arranged for her life to be over; a smiling, younger version from her childhood memories looked back at her and grinned like he used to do every time she would run into his arms, even as the ball made short work of him.

He had been her whole world in those early years.

_Daddy_.

Minako set back into a ready stance again, taking aim somewhere else now to try and keep the slight shimmer she felt beginning in her eyes from continuing to form. Tossing the ball up, she served it again and this time it landed closer to the back of the court, near the feet of a see through copy of her mother as she used to be since Minako hadn't seen her in at least a year, she preferred to remember her the way she had been not the way she was just as she did with her father.

How many times had she been short with her mother in the past because she knew she was going to leave her again and she didn't want to get anymore attached than she already was to lessen the hurt when it came? She was an only child and her mother valued her work more than she did her life. How was she supposed to feel? Why did she feel guilty? Why wasn't she angrier? How was it that time had taken that feeling and twisted it into a dull ache so that all she really felt was the shame of being a child left behind and the guilt of being such a horrible daughter that her mother had to leave her, though she knew that this wasn't the case but logic didn't do much good where emotions were concerned anyway.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself as she reached over and pulled another volleyball from the netted bag near her feet, Minako couldn't help but think back to the first time she had ever set foot in a hospital. That had been the day she had first met Dr. Rene Kuribayashi as well as the being the day she had first been diagnosed with her illness. It felt like everything had happened so long ago and here she stood this changed life, broken by time. She had been so different then, as a child. Everything was a game. Everyone was a friend or potential friend and nothing was worth crying over.

Minako could remember her parents being amazed when she would slip and scrape her knee and other than crying out or uttering anything more than a slight sniff because of the pain, she would be back on her feet smiling and talking to complete strangers again as her parents would walk her along the sidewalk. She used to love ponies, kittens, and butterflies and the color orange. She used to stand in front of the TV after her father would go to work back in the early years of his working for the family company and pretend she was a cowboy or a superhero fighting the bad guys or a model or an Olympic swimmer or a smart person with glasses who was trying to change the world.

Alright, that last one had died fast, but how had she lost so much of herself in such a short amount of time? How had she grown up so quickly? How had she lost so much and gained so little in the process? How had she ever thought she could've been a scientist at any age with a straight face?

All of these questions and more swam through Minako's head as she let another ball fly, this time reaching the far wall before it slammed into the concrete partition and slid down towards the hard wood floor.

Leaning over on her knees, Minako tried to catch her breath before she continued.

Had she lost _too_ much? Enough to make her a horrible person? Someone no one wanted to know or personally cared about beyond her premature fame? The girls at her new school were enamored with her and it made her proud, but it was an empty pride for she knew on the inside that they didn't like or appreciate her for who she was, only for what she could do for them or for what knowing her would make them in the eyes of their peers. They didn't really care about her. If Rika Katsumoto came to TA the so called group of "friends" she had accumulated would no doubt turn her in for front row concert tickets.

Letting out a frustrated huff, she tossed another ball up into the air and gave it a good whack, watching as it went through a see through an irked image of Aiko before it hit the floor and continued to roll.

Damn people. Damn the world. Damn destiny and fate and all of the other higher than thou cosmic powers out there that thought it was fair to make a game out of her life. Minako sniffed, not quite able to breathe normally anymore as both the physical exertion and the tightness in her chest were making it difficult for her.

She felt so small, like the universe could swallow her up any second and all she could do was wait to be devoured. Was she supposed to feel this way? Was she supposed to be this helpless? She was Sailor Venus!! How could she fight monsters in the streets like nobody's business and then be this vulnerable when she had to stand before the cosmos for its everyday judgment?

Minako's short breaths became terse, constricted sobs as she fought to keep her balance, the lack of proper oxygen threatening to make her world spin out of control.

How dare they! How dare everyone cosmic deity and plan human being alike, how dare they use her! What right did they have to step in and out of her life and meddle with it as they pleased? No wonder she hated people. Everything that was good about them was an illusion they put on so they didn't ever have to really care.

Fuck the world and all of the people in it. It could just save itself from evil alien takeovers from now on; she was through risking her life for a humanity that would never care about her.

Love was a myth…on all levels and she no longer wanted to be associated with it.

'_Those whose hearts are filled with kindness are often the ones who give into hopelessness and despair before the rest.'_

Minako's head snapped behind her, her eyes wide. Did she really just hear that or had it just been a figment of her very overactive imagination?

"_Duty. Duty fortifies the heart against the destructive habits of the being it inhabits and also against those of others."_

Minako didn't like being played with…well, not when it was at her expense at least.

"Who are you?" She shouted in the large room, empty of all but herself, her voice echoing off of the gym's bare concrete walls. "Show yourself!"

No one stepped out to claim the disembodied voice that decided to continue instead of keep her waiting in frustrated silence.

_I am Pluto and one day you will know me as a friend and fellow soldier, but as for right now, you may think of me as your conscience from a previous life. _

"_Conscience_? You're not my conscience!" Minako huffed to the empty room. "You're an annoying figure of my imagination that doesn't know how to take a hint."

Minako relaxed somewhat and took a deep breath as nothing but the silence was her reply from that point on. For some reason her head was spinning though she was pretty sure she hadn't overexerted herself yet. She was an athlete or had athletic interests at least. Minako was Sailor Venus for kami's sake! And she knew how far she could push her body before it collapsed. Lately though, her body hadn't been cooperating with her like it used to.

The blonde stumbled for a moment as a wave of dizziness hit her. What was going on with her lately? Dr. Kuribayashi had said it was only an inconsequential tumor at this stage, that though it was in operable, it shouldn't pose any difficulties for her in her day to day life, but so far she had been dizzy three times since her release from the hospital.

Could it be something else? Could something else be wrong with her? Hearing voices wasn't usually a sign of good mental health. Minako didn't want to think about it. What was, was, and what would be, would be. If she died, then she died. The world would just have to get along without her.

Ugh, what a crock of bull her mind came up with at 6:30 in the evening on an empty stomach…

She didn't get to finish that thought as another wave of dizziness, this one stronger, hit her like a gust of 100 miles per hour wind and like a piece of driftwood Minako caved and fell to the floor.

The world blurred into a dull grayness that her mind couldn't place and she suddenly had no idea where she was or even if she was still alive.

There were no sounds, no sights to tell her where she was if she was anywhere. Her body was laying on something soft, like a cushion, not the hardwood gym floor she had been standing on. Everything around her was in ruins. The decrepit spirals of a huge city rose above her and buildings were crumbled to dust to her left and right. Pushing herself up a little, Minako could see that she was now lying in a bed of soft grass. At first, she though that she was on the moon, reliving the destruction of the great kingdom that had been her home a millennia ago.

But that wasn't it. She was someplace completely alien to her.

The trees weren't the same trees. They were dark brown with gold leaves, some of them, while others were green with leaves that seemed to sparkle in the sunlight coming through the canopy above. All of the buildings were overrun by long green vines—even the towering spirals were crawling with them almost towards their utmost peaks. The stone around her was white, but the glow it gave off was not the type of white she remembered coming from the palace on the moon. It was different somehow—more eternal. She wanted to push herself up, but she just didn't have the strength for some reason.

However, who said fate wasn't willing to lend a helping hand sometimes?

Long fingers were the first thing Minako saw before she jerked back and noticed a elegant hand hovering in front of her face. It was darker than her own as Minako reached for it, almost a coffee color. Before she allowed herself to be helped anywhere, she looked up into a familiar smiling face and timeless garnet eyes. Then she was pulled up with a subtle strength she wouldn't have attributed to any woman let alone this one and her world spun.

Minako opened her eyes to find that she was still in the gymnasium and that she was now standing even though she knew she had fallen. The lights in the room had dimmed as though one of the custodians had come by and, noticing that no one was using it, had put the balls and the net away as though she had never been there. Had she left? If someone had found her they would have called the hospital so she must not have been here when the custodians came by. But then where had she been? How had she gotten there? And how was she back now with no memory of it whatsoever?

Fuck the tumor, she was just going crazy, that's what it was.

Minako was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't hear the shrill beeping of her communicator until it had gone off three times already. The girl raced over to the other side of the gym where she had set her bag down. Bending down, she fumbled with the zipper on the side pocket before getting it open and finally getting the thing out. When she opened it, Artemis' whiskered face was there, serious and out of breath.

The momentary lapse in battles that had let her live in peace for the past few months had evaporated. She was back in action now. Carrying the communicator with her, Minako hefted her backpack up onto her shoulders and took off at a run as the voice of her fluffy mentor echoed through the halls of the exercise center and out into the street.

* * *

The cold spot that everyone hid deep inside of themselves—it had encapsulated her.

Everything was ice. Everything was numb and she was apathetic to the outside world and all who lived there. Why the hell wouldn't they just leave her the fuck alone? Most people knew better by now. Most of them somehow sensed the emptiness within her and stayed out of her way because of it, so why didn't the others do the same thing?

She was alone. She was abandoned, fucking abandoned—she'd asked most of them to abandon her. And almost everyone had complied save for a foolish few.

Didn't they understand that she was dangerous? Didn't they understand that she was empty on the inside, listless, lifeless? Didn't they know that she had a fire inside of her, a blaze strong enough to devour anything and everything? A blaze of pure and utter cold that raged outward from within her soul to destroy everything it came into contact with. There was nothing good about her, nothing good left alive inside of her.

The last of any sort of good within her had died with her mother.

She was hollow now. A hollow representation of a girl who couldn't be touched—who didn't want to be touched and God help the person who tried.

Rei took a deep breath to try to bring some life back into herself as she sat in front of the sacred flame.

She had been sitting here for half an hour already, but from the first five minutes after she had sat down, she had felt her own unworthiness in its presence. Every time she tried to meditate—to focus her mind's eye to better understand the strange visions and feelings she was always having—she would feel disgusted by the disease that lurked just beneath her skin—the inhuman emptiness she felt from within herself.

There was something lacking there and that something vital was what separated her from all of the other girls her age at her school with their coddled naivety and overflowing sense of just how much went into their father's bank accounts at the end of each month.

Rei was different from all of them—not completely of her own doing—and her difference was her disease. It wasn't contagious. It was something that was genetic, inherent only to her. It was what gave her the strange abilities that had populated her classmates' whispers for years and also what brought her before the sacred flame every night. When she was little, Rei used to wonder why she was so different. Why had the Kami chosen her of all people to be the one everyone avoided? The one everyone but her closest family feared? On some level it was something she perpetuated, but on entirely another one, it had always been difficult for her to make friends because most of them were scared of the little psychic girl who could see things before they happened and who could tell what you were feeling even before you were sure of it yourself.

But then there were those who refused to leave her side—those annoying, bothersome beings brave enough to stick around her…

"Are you bored yet because I am."

The owner of the monotone sing-song coming from the other side of the room punctuated its point by letting out a long yawn after they were done speaking.

Keiko was sprawled out on the ottoman that had been set up for customers who wanted to come inside and watch their readings being interpreted in front of the fire, twiddling her thumbs and staring up at the lack of any sort of pattern carved into the cedar beams running across the ceiling.

Rei's brow creased ever so slightly and she struggled to hang onto the meaning of a vision she had been chasing…and failed. Rei opened her eyes and glared at the figure of her girlfriend through the fluctuating glow of the flames.

"What is your problem?"

"What!?" Was the indignant question.

"Can't you be quiet for five minutes?"

"Five?!" The previously sing-songy voice was shrill now as the girl held up her watchless wrist. "It's been like an hour, Rei!"

Rei shook her head, regretting letting Keiko talk her into inviting her over to the shrine for maybe the tenth time that night. On the other hand, she felt guilty for not devoting her attention to her girlfriend instead of her shrine duties, but as a miko she had things that were required of her each night. How could she shrink what was expected of her because she deemed the company of another as more important than her obligations? She couldn't.

Her mother had been a miko at her age and her grandmother before her —it had been how she had met her grandfather—how could she disappoint two generations who had come before her all for the luxury of the attention of a teenage girl?

"Hey! Earth to Rei."

Rei almost jumped out of her skin at the hand waving feverishly back and forth in front of her eyes. Keiko had a crooked grin on her face, her former frustration gone.

"You're so cute when you're confused."

Rei grunted, the small noise clearly informing her girlfriend that she didn't agree, but the sound just caused Keiko's grin to grow wider. Before Rei could say anything to that, the other girl had leaned forward and erased the distance between them with a kiss. Rei startled and didn't react after a few seconds, causing Keiko to sigh, irritated, and pull away from her.

"Well. That was an epic fail." She said crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at Rei. "You really know how to kill a moment, don't you?"

Rei's glare was equally as pointed as she crossed her arms over her chest in a self-protective posture mirroring her girlfriend's, "Well, if I had known there was going to be a moment, I wouldn't have killed it."

"Well, that's just dumb!"

Keiko stood on her tiptoes momentarily as her voice rose on the last few syllables of the word 'dumb'.

Taken aback slightly, but not for long, Rei's ire was growing. "You're one to talk, surprising me like that!"

"Well, it's your own damn fault for letting me surprise you. Why can't you try to predict me for once?"

Rei's confusion reflected in her angry tone, "How can I predict the unpredictable?"

"Easy." Keiko challenged moving her arms to her hips. "Pretend I'm one of your fire visions and hop to it."

The determination in her girlfriend's eyes made Rei take a step back, but she held her ground. So this was what happened when two opposite, but equally powerful forces collided. Too bad Einstein wasn't here to document it in action. For some reason Rei was pretty sure he would have been enjoying the moment a whole lot more than she was.

"You would say that." She said letting out an annoyed puff of breath at the end of the phrase. "You, a person who has no idea of the responsibilities I am expected to carry out. There's more to me than you realize, more expected of me than most people our age."

"I know, Rei."

"You what?"

The quiet answer surprised Rei and caused her to drop her arms to her sides as her confusion amplified. Keiko moved closer towards her until there almost wasn't a hand's length of unoccupied space between the two, her eyes meeting Rei's empathetically.

"I know." Keiko repeated calmly, "I remember seeing you when we were kids. My mother brought me to this shrine for the first time when I was around seven years old. My grandfather had fallen and done something to his shoulder and he was in the hospital so we came to say a prayer for him. That was the first day I saw you outside of school and you were so different at home. You were in a smaller version of your shrine robes and you were taking readings already. I remember that businessman you helped find his wallet. All you had to do was close your eyes and you just knew where he had misplaced it. I remember thinking how cool that was, that you were able to do something like that when no one else could. I went to school the next day and told my two best friends at the time, but they said that you were weird and that I should be afraid of you because you could do weird things and you might cast a spell on me or something if you got the chance. I didn't believe them though. Instead, I asked my mother to bring me back to the shrine and to you."

"Why?"

Rei's eyes were wide and her voice was uncharacteristically quiet, sounding small to her own ears.

"Because I knew you were different." Keiko continued, reaching up and resting one of her hands against Rei's cheek. To her surprise Rei didn't startle or try to move away from her this time, "Somewhere inside you had forfeited your childhood for a job that had found you whereas it happens the other way around for most of us when we grow up and fall into our adult lives. But like I said—you were different and I could never forget you because you always stood out to me. I appreciate what you do for people, I think it's cool, but at the same time I do realize that a lot is expected of you. But that doesn't take away from the fact that you're still just a kid no matter how much of an adult you've been on the inside for most of your life. And it also doesn't take away from the fact that you need to lighten up."

Here Keiko moved her hand from Rei's cheek and tweaked her nose causing Rei to startle and back peddle away from her.

"Hey!"

"Hey yourself." Keiko shot back at her batting her eyes innocently and backing way from her. "If you have something to say about it, then come and get me."

Rei completely forgot about proper decorum. She completely forgot about the readings she was supposed to be doing and all of the weight that always settled on her shoulders when she got up in the morning and didn't dissipate until she laid down to go to bed at night. All she could feel was indignation and the need to get after the cute yet completely annoying creature that she had unknowingly invited into her house.

"That is it!"

"Is it?" Keiko prodded, with a grin, "Are you sure you can't take more because I can do mor---AH,HA,HA,HA, NO! REI!!"

Keiko hadn't moved in time and Rei had barreled forward and tackled her to the floor of the fire room, knocking the wind out of them both. Keiko started to sputter protests and push against Rei to let her go, but then the tickle torture began and she was reduced to a quivering, incoherent mass of giggles.

For the first time in years—Rei Hino was a kid again.

* * *

Artemis moved to sit on the steel girder, watching intently as his charge entered the fray and engaged a blue monster that slightly resembled an alien locomotive in the train station below him. Correction, it was an alien locomotive only slightly humanlike. The creature was a cross between a woman that had skin the shade of a robin's egg and a bullet train with a few antique adjustments.

Watching as Sailor Venus landed a swift kick to the thing's chrome shins before having to run for it as the thing charged her, Artemis scratched at the uncomfortable ruffled collar around his neck. As a condition that she stop throwing cookery at him last night, Minako had demanded Artemis surrender his male cat dignity by wearing a pink ruffled collar around his neck, the type clowns often wore while performing their tricks for an audience at the circus.

Well if anything, the girl did have a sense of humor, Artemis conceded as he scratched at his neck some more, even if it was demonic and slightly disturbing.

As he tried to contemplate how it would even be possible for the Goddess of love to have been reborn as a charge of the devil, he noticed the monster on the ground charging towards Venus like a freight train again and watched as the girl dropped and rolled out of the way effortlessly to take up a defensive stance at the creature's back. Before it could turn around, she had landed a Crescent Beam to its backside, causing the monster to hop around comically for a few minutes as it rubbed at its injured butt and she flashed the surrounding crowd of onlookers and authorities with her standard V for victory sign.

The white cat grinned and sat back on his haunches in pride.

That was his girl.

The monster then proceeded to rear back for yet another run and Venus prepared to defend herself with a Love and Beauty Shock, but before she could release the attack from her lips, the creature used its whistle to blow the little golden heart back at its mistress where it promptly exploded in her face. Both Artemis and Venus sweat dropped at the same time as the monster danced around in a circle, blowing its whistles and bells in smug triumph.

Artemis laid down crossing one paw over the other and sighed in defeat as he watched the ensuing, heated showdown between both parties who hadn't really wounded anything more than each other's pride.

Yup, that was his girl alright.

The white cat smirked as the smoke practically bellowed out of Venus' ears and the monster across from her stopped in its victory dancing to pound its chest with its fist like a gorilla whom had just thoroughly humiliated his opponent and had thrown a handful of poop at the back of his retreating head to boot. That definitely did it.

Of all of the weak points for a Sailor Soldier to have, Venus pride was her Achilles' heel and it was always what an enemy could get her on.

And this one was taking full advantage of it as she stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry in Venus' general direction delighting in how the girl fumed uselessly over the insult.

Artemis groaned.

Would Venus ever be able to take their duty seriously? Seriously enough to stop letting such trivial things as her pride bog her down? The white cat had spent years lecturing his charge on leadership and commitment, hoping to arouse a sense of undying obligation in the girl. Instead, all he had managed to do was to get her to transform into Sailor Venus (which was a victory in its own right) and assure that at least a small part of what she had been reborn to do would get accomplished. Otherwise, the beautiful lady of Venus was only a shadow of who she had been in her past life.

He watched as Venus threw a punch and had it blocked by the creature she was fighting before being sent flailing down to the ground on her backside by a well placed kick to her abdomen.

Artemis stood quickly on wobbly legs, trying to steady himself from racing down to her.

She was a big girl now. He had to remember that. She could take care of herself. Or at least that was what she delighted in telling him every chance she got—this much, she could handle. This much she would want to handle on her own. It was a personal trial for his charge.

Venus didn't give the monster a chance to move out of the way before she had summoned her chain and secured one end around one of its ankles. It tried to struggle away from her, but she gave a quick tug and the thing tumbled to the ground. It fumed at her, blowing steam out of its whistles, but Venus only tightened her grip on her chain.

With her opponent firmly in her grasp, the senshi of love got to her feet—feeling that confident, reassuring aura of power around her consolidate itself again.

She _was_ Venus.

It was in moments like these when the woman she had been eons ago manifested herself in the form of the contemporary senshi. The two were one and when the two were combined into one fighting being, nothing could stop them. But Minako hadn't been a senshi for very long as it was and the union between who she was and who she had been was a trying one for her to reach and not one she was able to reach anytime she wanted, but rather a dynamic that only took place when she was in need of the extra push to make the difference between victory and defeat.

The creature pushed itself up using its arms, still billowing pillars of steam as its face flushed an angry red. The thing revved its wheels in anticipation to charge her, but Venus was ready for it this time. She raised one arm and aimed.

"Crescent Beam!"

The creature shrieked its last and disintegrated in a flash of gold.

Artemis smiled.

Yes. This was his girl.

* * *

The old window gave way with a harder than normal shove, almost causing the kid breaking and entering to lose his balance before Hisao Shimotsumaki straddled the windowsill so he could set one foot and then another into the empty study hall of St. Gerard's Boys Academy on his tiptoes. Carefully, he lowered the rest of his body into the room and let go, landing on the floor with a slight sound as the flashlight dangling in his teeth wobbled precariously. He straightened and the flashlight was removed as he reached up to pull the window down behind him, but thought better of it.

He would be gone before the bastards even found out he had been here in the first place so what would be thee point, really?

Sneaking out of his house in the middle of the night without waking either one of his parents or Mika who slept like a rock, but regardless, had been the real challenge. He don't know what he would have done if Mika had woken up, on one of those rare occasions when the dead rise, and had caught him sneaking out. He would have lied, fabulously of course, but still, she wasn't a person he was comfortable lying to.

Ever.

It was probably the fact that she didn't know any better, he mused, that out of all of the people in his life, she trusted him the most, with her whole heart and without a hint of hesitation. She would believe anything he fed her and so he was always very careful about what reached her ears, from his end anyway.

Grinning, Hisao stuffed the makeshift tool he used to pick locks, which he had spent years tailoring and fine tuning from scraps of metal and other tools in his grandfather's workshop and secretly in metal working class, into the back pocket of what he preferred to call his worn 'break in' jeans because he chose just such occasions to wear them on.

He stood quietly for a minute, listening to his surroundings for any interruption in the hum of the evening's silence.

Nothing.

Perfect!

Less distracted now by the prospect of being caught, Hisao continued through the darkened study hall—shining the light of his flashlight over every table before taking to the doors that led out into the main floor seeming to be oblivious to the shadows crawling across the tiles behind him.

* * *

Venus jumped off the roof of the adjoining property, landing gracefully on the bedroom balcony of the place her civilian form called home. Turning around, she looked up at the sky, noticing for the first time that evening that the moon wasn't out. It was well after midnight and yet only the stars were visible in the dark navy blue canvas which draped over the city.

It was disconcerting to Venus in a way, not being able to see the moon, though she didn't know why for sure.

As she moved back from the railing, she scanned the streets below to make sure she hadn't been seen by ant bystanders before relaxing again. Solemnly, she slid down the outer wall of the townhouse and came to sit against it, pulling back her knees and encircling them in her arms.

She could vividly remember a time when the satellite orbiting this planet had been her home and she had called a palace instead of a townhouse her place of residence along with a handful of other girls, all of them fellow guardians, though their faces and names remained the only part of her memories that were still too fuzzy to make out.

Funny, how thoughts of a time more than a thousand years behind them, beyond present or even historical memory, could occupy a person's mind so much as to almost seem like the life that had been led back then was alive again now.

Only this life was different and Venus knew it would never be the same because in this life she was alone.

In her past life she had been kept company by a lover, her soul mate, her destined partner; though Venus didn't know who it was. Hers (she knew it was a girl, that much she was sure of) was one of the fuzzy faces she couldn't quite make out in all of her memories and it bugged her. Every time she dreamed of her, all she saw was her eyes, violet eyes.

Familiar eyes.

Eyes that had belonged to a stranger who had walked her home one night for no apparent reason.

Venus sighed. She had thought back to that night over a million times in her head and had wished she had ended it differently. The kiss was nice, she wouldn't change the kiss, but she would have changed her reaction to it. Instead of running back to the house like a flustered little girl, she wished she had raced over to the girl and begged to go away with her. She was a complete stranger, true, but even in the short time they had spent together, Minako was aware that there was no other person in her life with which she had behaved so naturally or so freely.

How was that even possible? To feel such a connection with a total stranger whom she had never met before or since? In her hearts of hearts, Venus knew. That girl was hers and she belonged to her at the same time, they were two sides of a coin, as much as the idea scared her, she might very well have been her mysterious soul mate reborn.

Venus didn't even bother to contemplate how such a thing was possible for she herself had been given life in much the same way. Ha, she mused with a caustic smile, It was just a past life, how hard could it be to get yourself reborn? She had done it. It was probably a punishment for being a constant pain to all of the cosmic powers that be instead of some fatalistic fairytale cycle that left her and a bunch of other girls to risk their lives for someone who might not even be able to make a difference in things anyway.

Figured. If anything, fate certainly had a twisted sense of humor.

Sighing, Venus closed her eyes as images of a time so ancient it evaded even the long arms of science continued to play against the backs of her eyelids. She had to admit, it wasn't easy remaining passive as the torrent of memories flooded through her for they were as real to her now as they had been all of those long years ago.

She remembered the grand parties and balls that were held almost every week in celebration of some cultural holiday of one of the planets in their kingdom. Any excuse to have a party, she mused, and back in those days, and even now; the spirited Princess of Venus would have been the first to second that motion. Sighing tiredly, she rubbed her eyes, almost certain they were bloodshot by now.

Though the senshi in her tried to protest, the reality of the situation was that it had been a long night and Venus was exhausted beyond all measure.

Leaning her head back against the cool siding, the girl took a deep steadying breath as she stared up at the stars blinking back at her yet again, the subtle 'S' of the milky way seeming to twinkle at her as her eyes landed on it.

Where was her soul mate in this life? Could fate have really been so cruel as to have them meet for no longer than fifteen minutes on a dreary night and then never see one another again? Was that it?

Oh what an irony it would be if it was the Goddess of Love who was destined to spend the rest of her immortal life alone.

Venus swallowed the constraining dryness in her throat as two tears trekked their way down her cheeks and she closed her eyes, changing back into Minako, the school gym uniform she had been wearing materializing again as her sailor fuku disappeared. She tried not to focus on the stinging behind her eyelids or the swell of emptiness that had welled up in her chest for maybe the hundredth time today, but that was easier said than done.

Everything always was. It was how life worked.

Feeling the hazy blanket of cold night air wrap around her, Minako shivered against the side of the house. It was now well after midnight, a time for the majority of Tokyo's population to be in their beds. Minako sighed. And if she had any hope of making headway with the quiz in Hiedi-sensei's class she better get at least some sleep.

With one last look up at the spot in the sky where the moon should have been, Minako stood and opened the door leading into her bedroom and possibly the first good night's sleep she'd had in days.

* * *

First, second, and third periods had gone by as per usual. No blazing fireballs had come up from Hell to swallow the classrooms and their students whole nor had any comets dropped from the sky to obliterate the human race as Rei was half hoping one would do by falling out of orbit to accommodate her.

But no such luck was to be had on her part.

Rei hated the cafeteria. The whole lunch setup where the school crowded a couple hundred students into a room designed to hold about a hundred or so was not all it was cracked up to be and to make things worse, it was executed poorly. Students were released and herded by class into the long lunch lines, each one getting one of three options for every food unless they brought their own lunch or they were among some of the poorer students who were forced to work in the kitchens to pay for their classes.

Going through the lunch line was a rite of passage every high school student had to go through at one time or another and as if to push the students along, the order in which each class was released for lunch went in increasing order with freshmen being released for lunch first, then sophomores, etc. Rei was a freshman and so she attended lunch first with the rest of the girls in her year.

It was designed to be a "fun" excursion by the school staff, having students race each other to the lunch line and then cram themselves into even closer quarters all to inspire a feeling of "healthy competition" and "group conformity". It was a reality that left the hungry student feeling like they were standing in a breadline in Kyoto in the 1950s after the end of the War and that was not a good feeling.

Rei could certainly relate. She hated lunch lines, well lines in general, but the lunch lines in TA were the ones she hated the most. They seemed pointless and tedious beyond the point of usefulness.

The scowl on the fiery brunette's face grew as the girl in front of her reached back and flicked a hand through her shoulder length hair, almost smacking Rei in the face with the said hand and not even bothering to turn around in the process to see if she had nearly hit someone.

As the line moved at a sluggish pace, the miko tried to blink the fatigue from her eyes as she felt a hand come to rest softly against the middle of her back. She turned around and tossed her girlfriend an uncharacteristically lazy smile as she handed her a tray. Keiko smiled in thanks and moved to kiss her cheek, but suddenly remembered where they were and thought better of it with a slight pink coloring her face. Rei snickered at the developing blush which caused her girlfriend to become outraged and smack her arm reproachfully.

Rei didn't care it just made her laugh harder as the line moved and they advanced towards the much awaited goal of the day with the rest of the student body.

Meanwhile, already seated across the lunchroom, Minako sat with Chizuko, Hatsu, and Akio who stopped eating every few seconds to leer at her when she thought the blonde wasn't looking (much to her chagrin).

"So, did you guys hear?" Chizuko turned to Minako and Hatsu who were sitting across the table from her, "Katsumo is coming out with a new album. It should be in stores by the end of next week. Isn't that wonderful?! Couldn't you just die?!"

The girl hugged her arms to herself in oblivious excitement as both Minako and Hatsu stared at her with looks of amusement on their faces while Aiko, rolled her eyes, bored and continued to lean her head against her hand on the table.

Hatsu just shook her head at her best friend's gusto after further sharing an all too knowing look with Minako who was quickly coming to realize just how much of a true idol worshiper her new acquaintance was. Aiko yawned and focused her attracted gaze on the side of Minako's head that was facing her so she had a clear view of her flawless profile, much to the blonde's ire, though if Aiko was aware of it she neither showed it nor cared how the other girl felt.

Beside them Chizuko was still very animatedly gesturing with her arms as she talked in all her glory about the one concert of Rita Katsumo's which she had been able to attend courtesy of a radio drawing of some type of another as the more reserved Hatsu tried not to laugh at the pure enthusiasm the other girl seemed to be full of today.

Minako sighed internally, not letting her frustration manifest itself as a physical thing as she slouched back in her seat, staring out into the crowded cafeteria to get her mind off of the interested brown eyes she could feel appraising her against her will.

She watched with more interest than she would usually show as girls from her year filed out of the line, trays and food in hand as they made their way to their tables or as they languished for a pit stop at the condiments table or to talk to a friend they hadn't known had been in the line behind them.

It was then that she first saw her. Minako felt her jaw drop and her blue eyes go almost as wide as saucers.

It couldn't be…

The whole world seemed to stop around her. Minako's ears no longer registered the obnoxious rumble of the cafeteria or the nervous laugh of Hatsu beside her as Chizuko fixed her with a charming smile and begged her to attend the Katsumo concert with her. The shuffling of a hundred feet across the floor towards their destinations became a dull background lull, like the sound of a heartbeat. Nothing else mattered. Nothing save for the one person in the room she saw and needed to see.

It was her. The violet eyed girl who had walked her home a few nights before. The girl who's image had bee haunting her thoughts both awake and asleep since that one last kiss they had shared beneath the moon on that night.

She was just as Minako remembered her. The ideal icon of dark beauty, of passion personified. There was no other way to describe her. Her every move was a lesson in faultless use of the human form, even as she reached to grab the cruet of mandarin sauce to pour over her plate of chicken and rice. Skin dark, hands slightly calloused but somehow still soft and purposeful in every movement they made. Face, angular in all of the right places, sun kissed and perfect in every way even right up to the small healing scrap on one cheek. Somehow even that fit the mold.

She went to this school? Minako eyed the uniform it was the same and her own and if her mind had been functioning at even the minimum level of conscious efficiency, she probably would have noticed right off the bat, but she hadn't. How could she have missed it?!

She felt the urge to stand, just to jump up and run towards the girl of her past, her dreams and now of her reality. To latch onto her and never let go. She had the sense that if she didn't she would regret it, that if she let her get away it didn't matter what else happened in this life, to this world, nothing would be worth it because she would have lost the one person that had been her everything a lifetime ago.

But just as the urge to move came over her, what she saw stilled it and caused an uneasy coldness to settle in the pit of her stomach. A brown haired girl walked up and set her tray beside her violet eyed love interest. Something in Minako's wide blue eyes hardened as the girl's hands grasped onto her companion's lower arm and hugged it to her. The violet eyed girl gave her arm a slight tug and shot her a glare for it, but her brown haired girlfriend leaned up and pecked a kiss on her nose in an undeterred gesture.

Minako fell heavily against the back of her seat, slumping defeatedly as she watched the two interact with a mixture of hurt, disappointment, and envy clouding her light blue eyes.

"Minako?"

Hatsu's calm voice vied for her attention, but Minako couldn't tear her eyes from the two girls bantering intimately back and forth at the condiments table.

"Is something wrong?" Chizuko's equally curious voice interjected, watching the direction of where Minako's gaze had gone, but not seeming to be able to figure out what the problem was. Finally, she settled on just asking a question, "Do you know those girls?"

Minako swallowed the sudden dryness in her throat, but couldn't seem to find her voice. Instead, she just shook her head, feeling all of their eyes on her though she didn't acknowledge any of them.

"The one with the shoulder length brown hair is Keiko Oshida. Her father was a former attaché to the Prime Minister. She inherited her mother's legacy here." Chizuko explained.

"She's a nice girl, relatively kind and pretty popular too." Hatsu added. "And everyone pretends not to notice, teachers included I am pretty sure, but Keiko prefers dating girls to boys. In fact, I am pretty sure that girl she is hanging all over is her new girlfriend. What's her name, do you know, Chizuko?"

The other girl nodded animatedly, "Her name is Rei Hino. She's the senator's daughter. You don't hear good things about her very much though, just rumors really. She doesn't talk accept to piss people off and she doesn't seem to have any friends here. She's sort of an enigma, I guess. No one really knows a lot about her. "

"Though everyone sure talks like they do." Hatsu added with a note of small disgust showing in her voice for the other girls at their school though she was probably just as guilty as they were.

"Regardless, Keiko sees something she likes in her which means that Hino's definitely more than she seems." Chizuko finished.

A calculated huff came from Aikio as she crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes—the dull browness of them landing on Rei as she and Keiko moved over to a table where some of Keiko's friends were sitting, the miko seeming to trail after her girlfriend with some small hesitation as though she were being led to the guillotine. Then the focus of those brown eyes shifted and fell on Minako. The girl looked like she had just been told she had cancer. Her face was pale, her expression was confused—or disappointed either one or both—and her eyes were eyeing the Hino girl with a steady sense of loss shining in them.

Before Aiko could tack any implications onto what she was thinking, Minako had pushed her chair away from the table, making a hideous screeching sound that brought the attention of outside eyes down on her. But she wasn't paying attention to them.

"I'm going for a walk." She said.

Chizuko and Hatsu were looking at her, surprised at the sudden change in her mood.

"Okay." Hatsu said still at a loss. "See you in class then."

But Minako had already left them and the cafeteria behind.

* * *

Rei's fist pounded into the cool steel of her locker door, dislodging a mirage of aging paint chips after yet another failed attempt to get the thirty year lock to open on the right number. Damn it! Who had the idea for these stupid tin cans without proper openers in the first place?

Grimacing inwardly as her fist began to throb, Rei readjusted her hold on the books in her arms and spun the lock to clear it before trying again. 23…56…39. Nothing. 23…56…39. Again, nothing. F-ing 23,56,39! A resistant click was her answer. Rei didn't waste any time throwing the door open and tossing two of her history books into her locker then retrieving her math textbook and much lighter science workbook out of the well organized space.

"Easy there, Casanova. I wouldn't have taken you for such a hothead, but I like it. It's a good look on you."

Rei froze.

That voice. It couldn't be.

Minako.

Rei knew the name before she'd even had to be told what it was. Something deep inside of her recognized it, had yearned for it all of these long years laying dormant.

She didn't want to turn around because she knew the moment she did that it would be all over. Things would change and there would be no going back. Though she wasn't quite sure what would change…her instincts were telling her that nothing would ever be the same again.

Still, Rei couldn't help herself. She turned around and found herself staring into the same blue eyes that had captivated her only a few days before. They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. There was so much between them. So much history. A millennia long love, a life together that had ended all too abruptly. They both had issues with their pasts. They both had unresolved issues with each other—they just couldn't remember them. All that remained was the feeling, the strong feelings of attachment that bound them together in a vague way.

And it was annoying.

"What was that?" Rei asked, pretending to be perturbed so she could hide how much her heart was racing.

Minako pushed off of the wall of lockers she had been leaning against making Rei idly wonder just how long the other girl had been watching her before she had decided to make her presence known. The blonde sauntered over to her, a familiar plotting glint shining from the depths of her blue eyes. A glint that Rei had both adored and dreaded in her past life, but she didn't know what to make of it now. As Minako got closer to her, Rei suddenly had the urge to jump out of her skin, but the best she could do was back up almost until she was sitting in her own locker.

A charming smile came over Minako's features and she didn't even bother to hide her delight at how Rei was reacting to her.

" Come on, Casanova." Minako practically purred, her face getting very close to Rei's quickly reddening one. "What have you got to be worried about from little old me?"

"I don't kno—know what you're talking about." Rei stammered, trying to ignore how the heat in her face rose every time Minako used _that_ tone of voice with her.

Minako stayed quiet, the smile edging its way into a grin as she stared into Rei's eyes. Then, without really thinking about it, the blonde leaned forward and planted a light kiss on Rei's lips that seemed to linger longer than she had intended. When she pulled away, her eyes were a slight shade darker and her voice was a little bit lower, but no less light and frothy.

"See you tomorrow, Casanova."

Rei wanted to say something, wanted to call Minako back to her, but instead of saying anything she choked on the long string of words before it even left her mouth. She was left to stand there, dumfounded, as the blonde swaggered away from her and turned a corner down the hall, out of sight.

* * *

The large bathroom was a snowscape, sheltered in the blizzard of steam clouds that were rising out of the hot water quickly filling the large Jacuzzi tub and bringing a froth of sweet smelling bubbles to fruition as the water level rose. If it had been cold inside it might have been a winter wonderland, but since it was exactly the opposite, the comfortable room felt closer to a sauna than anything else.

Minako moved through the mists with practiced ease wrapped in nothing but a full body towel, her blonde hair swaying back and forth behind her. Leaning down, she turned off the faucet before the steaming bubbles could reach the porcelain brim and then stepped back to let the towel fall to the side before she stepped into the hot water one leg at a time.

Minako sighed as her whole body slipped into the hot water and leaned back comfortably against the ivory basin beneath her.

It had been a long night/day/night combo….but it was one of the few times when she could say that going to school was actually worth it.

She'd met her again, her violet eyed partner. They went to the same school and though Rei was taken, it wouldn't stop them from being friends.

Minako swallowed the fear that was rising up in her. What if Rei wanted nothing to do with her? What if she just dismissed her in this life? She wouldn't be able to handle it. She'd die, mission or no mission, this world wasn't worth defending if _her_ Rei wasn't in it

Minako made a makeshift bowl using both of her hands and used it to gather enough water to splash against her face, but it did little to wake her up or console her.

What she really needed couldn't be remedied by a bath.

* * *

"There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know any of them."

-Sylvia Plath-

(1932 – 1963)

_**Author's (long ass) Note:**_

Hello All! Hope everyone is enjoying this fic so far and judging from the positive reviews I guess everyone is, so YAY!! That means I am doing my job. ;) I have a few clarifications to make at the end of this chapter. First of all, the reason the Sailor Venus fight with the train monster is so short and told from Artemis point of view instead of hers is because I am putting the another version of the battle in the third chapter of my Ami/Makoto companion piece _Take Me Away_ so if any of you are interested in reading the full fight, you can find it in chapter three of that piece once it is posted.

Secondly, I am glad everyone is enjoying the little Hisao interludes in these chapters. I got the idea for him in the beginning as a counter character to the senshi's goodness and as a character we can better relate to. I mean we can relate to the senshi and their struggles in their civilian lives, but at the same time they are super heroes with all these elemental powers and destinies that are hard for the average person to relate to, whereas Hisao is a guy who started out as good but went wrong in a very common downturn. He is miserable not as a result of all of the same external issues the senshi are going through, but because he is so focused upon himself and what he despises. He's taken a decision that we all have: to roll with the punches and get back up when we can or let them twist us into something unrecognizable, and he has taken the latter of the two as a way out. It just makes him interesting to me, if nothing else, I guess.

Thirdly, a few questions were posed in the last batch of reviews as to whether or not I am going to have the rest of the senshi in this story and the answer is of course!! :D I honestly can't imagine a story in which the senshi are not and I do not think I could write one like that so yes you will be seeing them all—well—all the Inner Guard at least. Maybe you'll see the Outers in a sequel someday, if I ever write one after finishing this….if I ever get around to finishing this that is. ;)

Thank you everyone for reading and I really appreciate everybody taking the time to leave me a review when they've finished. They really do help me keep this fic going and I encourage more feedback, as much as people are willing to give me, so that I can make this story the best that it can be for you guys. Have an awesome week and thanks again everyone!

-Bruteaous-


	7. Had it All

_**Chapter Seven: Had It All**_

Keiko hated blondes.

In her experience they could be and often were the most annoying, bothersome, and threatening creatures on Earth to a brunette. Especially, when one of them had latched onto her girlfriend. Not just anyone's girlfriend, mind you, no, that would be too simple, too easy. Nope. It was hers.

HERS!

The lockers on either side of the hallway were always swarming with students at the beginning of the day and of all the personal spaces in all the world to be invaded…Minako Aino had to walk into hers. Keiko rolled her eyes and glared at her miko and the over enthusiastic blonde as they continued the argument they had been having ever since they had "accidentally" crossed paths with the blonde while walking on their way to school this morning, as they always seemed to run into Minako, only ever "by accident", of course these days.

"It is not."

"Minako—"

"Nope, I don't believe it."

"Minako—"

"Nope."

Rei sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, very much aware that the third headache of the morning since meeting the blonde was springing up between her eyes.

"Whatever." Rei gave up and went back to rearranging the uncharacteristic mess in her locker (for some reason unknown to Rei, her insane sense of organization had packed its bags and taken a holiday and Minako's over ambitious sense of chaos had made her own locker its new home without her approval).

"Aw, Rei!" Minako pouted, jutting out her bottom lip as her eyes moistened on cue and completed the ensemble of a very sad, very deflated blonde that she had been going for. Then she moved in close to the brunette and purred into her ear, "You're no fun anymore, Casanova."

Rei's cheeks reddened at the comment and she was so out of it that the slamming of her own locker door actually caused her to jump a few feet off to the side. When she turned around Rei found her girlfriend leaning against her now closed locker, eyes glaring at her.

Whoops…guess Keiko hadn't heard of Minako's little nickname for her before…don't know how she missed that…

Rei didn't even try to salvage the situation, she just looked down at the floor as she felt her face heat up the rest of the way and take on a shade of much darker red. Beside her, she also felt the blonde stiffen and when Rei dared to chance a glance over at Minako, she noticed that her eyes were closed as if she was expecting someone to hit her or a volcano to suddenly erupt from the center of Tokyo and incinerate them all into nothingness any minute now.

"Well," Keiko started, closing her eyes and making a production of pushing her already flawless bangs off to the side of her face, "This was fun, Minako. We should have a repeat performance another time when we just happen to "accidentally" cross paths with you."

Rei reached out to try and grab her elbow as the girl walked away from her, but Keiko brushed her hand off of her arm muttering only, "See you in class."

The miko watched her girlfriend's retreating back as she walked away, conflicting emotions burning a hole in the center of her chest.

"That sucks." Minako announced from behind Rei, leaning against Rei's locker in the position previously vacated by Keiko.

Rei turned fiery eyes towards the smirking blonde. "Great! Just great! Now she's going to be mad at me for most of the day and not talk to me at all and it's all your doing!"

"Well, you know me, troublemaker and all." Minako said, the playful smirk staying firmly in place.

Rei just glared at her and nudged her to the side so she could get into her locker again, but as one of her hands was trying the combination lock, the blonde stayed it with her own and Rei almost stopped breathing.

She didn't know how she had known the blonde in the first place or even how it was possible for her to have such an effect on her when Rei was happy with and cared about Keiko. But it was always like this. When Minako beckoned, Rei couldn't refuse her.

And it was getting so damn frustrating!

Rei took a deep breath, but couldn't meet Minako's eyes. She just stared into the cheap grey paint like it was the most interesting thing in all the world. The other girl's eyes on her always made her cheeks flush and her body feel hot all over and she couldn't figure out why. She never had this much trouble maintaining control over her own body, not even when Keiko was in one of her mischievous moods and insisted on being all touchy-feely. Rei was the epitome of control. She never showed how she was really feeling on the inside unless she was infuriated and there was little point in holding it in then because whatever or whoever had incurred her wrath most certainly did deserve it.

Another thing that really bothered Rei was how the blonde was able to react to her as if she had known her all of her life, as if her outbursts of temper, blunt remarks, and sarcastic comments were all things she were used to and didn't have to sidestep because she knew how to deal with them in a way that was almost, impossibly…natural.

Them.

They—the two of them—defied reasonable explanation. After all, Rei had only met Minako a week or so ago so how could things feel so automatic, so normal between them so quickly?

Now, there was something she would have expected Mercury to say…

What the…? Who the hell was Mercury? Mercury was a planet and planets couldn't talk and she knew that, so what had made that thought even pop into mind in the first place?

Rei shook her head to clear it, the notion that she really was losing her mind becoming truer and truer as the seconds ticked by.

"Rei." Minako softly called her attention back to her.

Rei swallowed again, this time for courage and dared to meet the blonde's addicting blue eyes. I don't care what she says, Rei thought in her head, I'm not going to listen.

Minako recognized the resistance in Rei's eyes and leaned in close to whisper in her ear, making sure to breathe lightly over the tip of her ear as she did. Rei stiffened, but was having trouble fighting to keep herself in check as the blonde was quickly shredding her control to ribbons.

Minako grinned, knowing full well what she was doing. When she finally spoke she punctuated each word with a breath as if each one were its own sentence, "You. Are. Too. Cute."

Rei's eyes widened and she pushed away from the blonde to look down into the mischievous baby blue eyes staring up at her. Finally, Minako couldn't take it anymore, she laughed. Rei glared. And all was it should be as the first warning bell before classes beeped through the practically empty hallway.

* * *

"What's eating you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Not that I usually pay attention to you or anything, but you look down."

"Gee, thanks."

Keiko leaned her head on her hand and glared down into the open pages of her textbook, a virtuous looking portrait of St. Francis of Assisi staring back up at her surrounded by a ridiculously smiling assortment of animals.

Aiko Shizuki sat across from her in the library study area, paying no attention to the books laid out in front of her either.

"What really gets me is that I let this whole thing happen." Keiko complained, pushing her book and its smiling saint away from her as if it had some sort of infectious disease.

"Let what happen?"

"Let Minako get so close to Rei."

A noncommittal grunt was her only answer, but Keiko ignored it anyway and kept going with her woe-is-me rant.

"I mean I noticed how she was acting the minute she asked to walk with us to school that one morning last week, being all coy and refusing to bother us and Rei's insistence that she wasn't because of it and should tag along too. Ever since then it's been like the involuntary Three Musketeers everyday and I hate it." Keiko paused in the middle of her rant to stare at Aiko, "And why am I telling you any of this?"

"Hell if I know. Beats talking to yourself though doesn't it?"

"Hardly." Keiko snipped, indignant.

"Whatever. It's your problem." Aiko huffed, turning a page in her calculus book, uninterested in its contents.

"Oh come on, don't tell me that you don't care who your little blonde angel cares for because I won't buy it."

Aiko froze just then and her eyes hardened.

"And just what do you think you are implying?"

"Oh please, don't play dumb with me. Your obstinate tough act is easier to see through than plate glass."

The furious glare Aiko was giving her would have killed a weaker minded person, but Keiko stuck to her guns.

"The simple fact is that what is making my life a living hell day in and day out is something that you want and that I would be glad to get rid of with a little help."

Aiko broke eye contact with the other brunette and turned back to her book, though she wasn't really reading the words down on the page.

"I don't make deals with backstabbers." She finally replied angrily.

"Hypocrite!" Keiko accused.

"Medusa!" Aiko growled back at her.

They were at a standstill, a snow covered pass where neither wanted to step foot and give way first.

Then finally:

"Fine, be that way."

"Fine."

There was a short silence as the girls again pretended to take an interest in the textbooks they'd brought to their free period to study, but like before, neither brunette was really paying much attention to them. Aiko was halfway through reading a sentence she had read about five times and her mind still refused to compute when Keiko started it up again.

"I'm just saying," She began as any good diplomat would: with an objective statement leading into a logical plea bargain that they could both benefit from. "That I am having a hard time with all of this."

Aiko regarded her silently for a few minutes, dark eyes looking her up and down and making the girl across from her slightly uncomfortable. Then she did the unpredictable, Aiko smiled.

"Well…who wouldn't, I mean, you're not supposed to have to share your girlfriend with other people, right?" She agreed.

Which was how Keiko knew she was winning. The other girl never smiled, not even on good days.

Keiko grinned.

"Right, which is why I would like to ask for your help. You see, I've noticed how you pine over her, Minako I mean. You don't try to be obvious about it and I don't think anyone else has noticed, but I have."

Aiko just sat there, her eyes wide and her mouth open slightly as heat rose in her cheeks at being called out on her "secret" crush.

"How?" She asked, dry mouthed.

"It shows in your eyes and in how they look at her all of the time as if expecting her to notice you when she absolutely refuses."

"How do you know she refuses?" Aiko became indignant, but Keiko held her ground.

"Because most of the signs you're giving her, albeit a little stalkerish, she would have to be blind, dumb, and deaf not to notice and all of those things we both know she isn't." Keiko reasoned.

Then Aiko became silent as Keiko paused, thinking how to better phrase her continuing argument in a way that was both nonthreatening and persuasive at the same time.

"What if…"

Then she stopped at the look on Aiko's face and had to rethink her strategy to save herself from the inferno she could see ready to boil over if she used the wrong words.

"Okay, scratch that—"

"Are you always this annoying in the morning?" Aiko sighed, messaging her temples and trying to will away the blush she could still feel on her cheeks.

"Are you always this angry in the morning? No, wait, my bad; you're like this all of the time!" Keiko shouted, at the end of her rope with the other girl.

"Take that back!"

"I will not!"

"FINE!"

"FINE!"

As the echo of both of their angry voices receded, a heavy book was plopped down on their study table causing both girls to look up into the beat red face of the librarian, Sister Abigail.

Aiko swallowed hard as the woman stared them down. Keiko turned her head, confirming the undeniable truth, that yes, they had attracted the attention of all of the other girls in their study period and the eyes of every table were focused squarely on the two of them. Among the onlookers were Chizuko Oneda and Hatsu Urameshi. Recognizing them and a good many of her other classmates, Keiko had the decency to blush and bring her hand up to cover her eyes, but their slack jawed, bug eyed gapes—as well as those of most of the other curious bystanders—miraculously focused elsewhere when Aiko pinned them all with a glare that clearly said she could find out where they all lived and do something about it if they decided to make this a topic of discussion in the halls.

"Girls," Sister Abigail began, pushing her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose and crossing her arms in front of her chest, "What do you have to say for yourselves before I send you both down to the Monsignor's office?"

Aiko just stared down at the table as if she could burn a hole right through the sixty year old wood.

"Nothing, just punish us." Keiko sighed; face still tinged a mortified pink from the base of her neck to her forehead.

_

* * *

_

* * *

Fifteen minutes later…

"What on Earth are you looking at now?" Aiko asked from her chair, very much annoyed as Keiko not just moved, but bounced over to another bulletin board in the hallway outside of the Monsignor's office.

Keiko's blush had disappeared and her index finger was fixed on her chin as she read the paper on the board aloud:

"Attention all Students and Teachers, please be notified that the person listed below is missing. If you or your classmates have any information concerning his whereabouts please call the Tokyo Police at the number shown below. Hm, this kid isn't that much older than we are."

"Who is she?" Aiko asked, only half interested, "Anyone you recognize?"

"He," Keiko corrected, "Is a sophomore at St. Gerard's Boys Academy and he's been missing for almost a week. His name is Hisao Shimotsumaki. You know him?"

Aiko shook her head in the negative and leaned back on the bench until her back was resting comfortably against the stone wall.

"I don't know him either, but I just hate bulletins like that. It's so sad to think that someone is out there, could be bleeding or dying, and no one can find them."

"Think of it as natural selection hard at work in the modern day."

A devilish smile came to Akio's face, but Keiko was horrified.

"I can't believe you just said that!"

Aiko only yawned, covering her mouth with her hand, "Believe what you want to."

"I will!" Keiko returned, not having anything else to say to that.

Suddenly, the door to the Monsignor's office opened and Sister Abigail's head peeked out, her squinting eyes daring the girls to continue their high pitched conversation.

"Sorry." Keiko conceded, her face reddening again.

"You two better be or if you're not, you're going to be soon." Sister Abigail stepped out of the room and held the door open, "The Monsignor will see you both now."

Keiko cringed, but Aiko looked like she couldn't care less about where they were going. Sister Abigail glared at them both.

"Alright, in," She ordered.

Aiko stood up and walked in first leaving Keiko to follow her reluctantly as the door was closed behind them.

* * *

"Five Hail Maries and a Saturday detention? Who gives out punishments like that?"

"Well, obviously the Monsignor." Rei, cut in, realizing as her girlfriend's frustrated eyes narrowed at her that it was the wrong place to be the voice of reason.

"Old balding coot that he is…" Keiko fumed, turning away from Rei back to the rest of their lunch table.

Minako Aino, Chizuko Oneda, and Hatsu Urameshi all sat across from Rei and Keiko at the rectangular lunch table, all three of the girls dividing their attention between their food and Keiko's rant about her morning. Minako was leaning her arms against the table, not interested in her tray or the miserable state sanctioned lunch that she'd been served on it. Instead, she was staring at Keiko, patiently waiting for the girl to finish with her tirade against the useless bureaucratics of their school before she could add her two cents on the situation.

"At least it's only five Hail Maries and not five more detentions—" Minako began, but didn't get to finish.

"Blondie, I am not in the mood right now for your "words of wisdom" or your sarcastic turns of phrase. You close your mouth right now or I swear—" Keiko said, pointing her tapioca spoon menacingly in Minako's direction to finish the threat her words couldn't.

Minako just grinned and leaned her chin against one of her hands, batting her eyes at the miserable brunette and giving her a look that said that she was going to have more fun with this later. Rei recognized the waiting mischief in the blonde's eyes and glared at her in warning, but Minako ignored it.

"Well, Sister Abigail is British," Chizuko tried to redirect the attention of the group to her and away from the surly blonde who so loved to cause Keiko trouble. "Perhaps, they do things differently in their private schools over there."

"Yeah, but she isn't the one who gave meated out the punishment." Keiko wagged her finger at Chizuko, "Weren't you listening at all, Chiko? Monsignor Soseki has been living in Tokyo all of his life. He was the monsignor when my mother went here, for Christ sake, he's practically a dinosaur."

"Or a fossil." Minako quipped with a cute little smile.

Keiko's eyes narrowed at the blonde and she was about to open her mouth to tell the blonde what she could do with her "fossil", but Rei cut in before she could get the words out.

"Yeah, he has been here quite awhile." Rei said, pushing her salad around on her plate with a plastic fork, "My grandfather used to tell me stories about when my mother went here and how one time, the monsignor even punished her for skipping to class."

"No kidding?" Hatsu leaned forward, wide eyed.

"Hmm, that does seem a little overly strict." Chizuko commented, leaning her chin in her hand.

"Was her punishment as stupid as mine?" Keiko asked, still in a pouty mood.

Rei shrugged and took a sip of her water. Out of the corner of her eye she could see movement as she drank, and when was finished, she glanced down the table to see Aiko Shizuki take the empty seat next to Keiko. Her girlfriend looked up once to acknowledge the other girl's presence, but looked away just as quickly without giving Rei enough time to read anything into the action. When Rei looked back across from her, Minako's eyes met hers, letting her know that she'd seen something there too.

Aiko set her tray down and spread a napkin over her lap, immediately digging a fork into her plate of rice.

"Aiko, you must be hungry." Hatsu commented watching the girl devour her food in silence. "First you earned a detention in morning study period and then you survived Hidei sensi's math exam. That takes energy."

Aiko glanced up at her, but didn't verbally respond to the comment. Then Keiko cleared her throat, subtlety never having been one of her better qualities, and smiled in a cattily at Minako as Aiko blushed over her food. Minako, for her part, looked slightly confused, her expression mirroring Rei's as she looked between the three of them.

Ugh! Things were so much less complicated when I used to eat alone, Rei thought, watching as her girlfriend's smile diminished some and was replaced with a flat line across her face.

"So…Minako," Keiko began, not bothering with the smile this time. "How's the personal life going for you?"

Aiko choked and Minako smiled without missing a beat, "As well as I want it to go. I can usually find someone to fill my lonely nights and when I don't want anyone I don't worry about it."

"Well, I just thought I would try to help you out, you know, introduce the new girl at school to some of the single people in our year."

"I don't need the help, that is, unless you're offering?" Minako finished with a suggestive wagging of her eyebrows.

Rei found herself having to physically restrain her girlfriend from crawling up on the lunch table that separated her from the blonde while both Hatsu and Chizuko had expressions on their faces varying in degrees from very amused to quietly mortified. Aiko just sat, staring dejectedly down into her plate of food.

"Jeez, Keiko, I didn't know you had such a temper." Minako continued, her smile widening into an incorrigible grin that she didn't even try to contain.

Rei looked across the table at her, giving her a another glare that didn't have any real threat behind it.

Keiko stood up, fighting to control her voice and the blush that seemed to be popping up a lot on her cheeks these days, "I didn't until YOU forced your way into my life."

"Awww, Keiko, now I get the impression that you don't like me."

And with that, the blonde's grin became absolutely predatory.

Keiko looked around her at the other people in the cafeteria, a few of them that passed by giving her strange looks because she was just randomly standing instead of sitting and eating her lunch or talking to her friends. She knew she was seriously being provoked. It was the blonde's way with her as it was with everyone, to play with them like a cat with a mouse, but she just had the most vehement reaction to it of anyone else.

And she sure as hell knew why.

Sighing, she gave Minako a withering look and then sat down again. For awhile after that, Keiko was doing pretty good on the temper checking, that was, until Rei shook her head at her.

"What was that for?"

"What was what for?"

She must be losing it. That was it, Keiko was losing her mind. She wanted to cry, scream, shout, yell, laugh…any of it. All of the sudden she felt extremely tired.

"What was that look for?" She asked again in frustration.

"What look?"

Rei was confused and it was a look on her that Minako personally found very endearing on her.

"The one you gave me when you shook your head at me just now?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't remember giving you an odd look."

"But you shook your head at me?"

"I did." Rei conceded, sure that she had at least done that much.

"Why did you do that?"

"Well…bcause I thought you overreacted to…uh…" Rei's truthful confession died on her lips as the angry look on Keiko's face amplified and her face reddened.

"You did not just say that!" Keiko said, her voice sounding a little wobbly. "You did not just defend her to me…"

Rei swallowed and looked across the table at Minako. The blonde had brought her hand up to her forehead and was using it to prop up her head against the table refusing to meet Rei's or anyone else's eyes. This—and many other clear clues—told Rei that her choice to continue to be her truthfully blunt self was a dangerous one in the face of her girlfriend's emotional upheaval.

"I've had a horrible day and…I-I was just looking for a little bit of sympathy and you…"

Keiko couldn't finish, she was too unsteady. Instead, she stood up, left her tray there and fled the cafeteria. Minako kept her head propped up against her forehead as Rei just sat there, never having had any experience with a relationship like this before, and was at a loss as to what to do.

"Go after her, dunce." Aiko said, now leaning against the fair wall behind the table, narrowing her eyes at Rei.

Minako looked up and narrowed her eyes at the brunette causing her to look away from her. Rei swallowed and stood up, leaving her tray too as she silently left the cafeteria in search of her girlfriend.

Minako raised her head and took a drink of her water. To be fair, she had been trying to get a reaction out of the brunette, but not one like this and she felt sort of…guilty about it. The table was quiet until Hatsu decided to voice what they were all collectively thinking.

"Poor Keiko." Hatsu said.

"Yeah," Chizuko agreed, putting her hands behind her head, "Rei has a lot to learn still."

* * *

Goddamn it!

He felt like shit!...And his head…who the hell had convinced him to drink last night and why had he listened?

Hisao groaned as he stretched out in the darkness of the room across the cold stone floor, not coherent enough to remember how he'd gotten there or to know even where he was.

"Ugh!" Hisao moaned as he braced his hands on the floor and tried to turn his body around to get up onto his knees.

There was a dark presence that Hisao was beginning to recognize in the room as he began to adjust to his surroundings. The room was cold and the floor was concrete. Everything was pitch black and there was almost no light. Somewhere around him he could hear dripping and there was a strong stench in the air of dampness and mold that reminded him of being in a basement only ten times worse. So…he was in a wet cyber cop version of hell then, only he wasn't alone.

"Have you ever heard any creature make so much noise?" A man grumbled to himself, "Who knew humans were so whiney."

"Who's there?" Hisao started to yell, but the loud sound aggravated his headache and the last few syllables dragged out into a pitiful whisper.

"Pathetic." The voice groused again, the one word reply emanating from somewhere in the darkness.

Hisao growled, but couldn't find the energy in himself to fight back against the statement.

"Our Queen must be losing her edge if she sees any sort of worth in you."

A short haired blond man leaned against one of the four walls of the room, his face and part of his chest shrouded in the completeness of shadows where the naked human eye could not see him .

Hisao groaned again, pressing his head into the cold concrete beneath him and praying to whoever would listen to stifle his headache. He could feel the pendant on the key chain connected to his belt pressing into his stomach. It was uncomfortable.

He finally managed to get himself into a half sitting, half laying position.

"Who are you?" He asked a second time.

"It doesn't matter," the man said, "You'll be dead before it matters, but if it makes the quality of your life that much better then I might as well tell you. My name is Jadeite and you'll be serving under me from now on."

Hisao rubbed at his eyes to try and clear the fuzziness from his vision, but in the murkiness of the room it was hard to really see anything.

"What…What do you want from me?" He sputtered out, his mouth dry, his body dehydrated and throbbing while his mind was still angry at being in the custody of this obviously strange man with a possible fetish problem and confused as to how he got anywhere near him.

The last thing he could remember was he had been in the school about to pull off his most impressive episode of breaking and entering to date and then nothing…he couldn't remember anything else. Somewhere along the way he'd blacked out and now he was…he was…somewhere underground, maybe?

Jadeite watched the teenage boy as he began to crawl across the floor, his ancient eyes trained in centuries of seeing into just such darkness. Knowing that he shouldn't waste anymore time, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass vial.

"I want nothing to do with you, to tell the truth." He said, "but my queen has other plans for you, so we're both just going to have to deal."

There was a small popping noise as he released the stopper from the vial and moved closer. His foot falls echoed in the darkness and Hisao instinctively tried to move away from the sounds, but his body's response was sluggish at best, and Jadeite had stopped beside him before he was able to move. The sharp sole of a military boot slammed into his chest and Hisao gasped painfully as the air was pushed out of his chest and he couldn't breathe.

"Please…don't"

Jadeite knelt down onto his free leg and grabbed the boy's chin with his other hand, forcing the boy's mouth open. Then, without warning, the contents of the vial were poured down Hisao's throat. He choked, but swallowed most of it. And that was all it took.

He couldn't see himself, but he could feel his body changing. Bones broke and knit themselves into a foreign anatomy, skin ripped and stretched, clothes tore. He tried to scream, but it came out as an echo of a scream, a contorted animalistic like sound. Jadeite jumped back watching the creature take shape from the boy. He was not, however, very interested by the pair of claws that took the place of hands, and four spry legs on each side that took the place of two legs, or of the exoskeleton that took the place of the human form. He just watched long enough to know that the creature they had wanted had now taken shape and then he dematerialized into the darkness.

The sad reject of evolution breathed heavily on the floor, just getting used to a new set of lungs that had not belonged to the human boy it had been. Scraps of clothing were strewn across the floor. Beady dark eyes could now see through the darkness. They searched around for the man who had changed them, but he was nowhere in the small concrete room.

Laying across the floor, still strung onto one belt loop, was the pendant his sister had given him still on his keychain. Beady eyes stared at it, as if recognizing it from some far off hazy place for the first time. Moving sluggishly, a huge claw moved over to clamp around the object, but it snapped in two between them. The newly formed creature let out an agonizing howl at the life it knew it had lived somewhere else. At the world it had been forced to leave behind. It was something new now, something alone, and alien to all life forms on Earth. Something wretched. Something that would not be accepted by mankind.

The beady eyes had translucent eye lids and tear ducts to moisten them, but could form no tears to mourn the life it had lost. What was it? Did it even have a name now? Who had it been?

The claw tightened around the splinters of wood it crushed as the creature sobbed, still laying prostrate along the floor like a lost human child.

* * *

Most of the chores around the shrine she'd finished after they had come home from school and now Rei was in the kitchen preparing a tray of tea for them drink while they studied while Keiko had gone to her room and had presumably already started studying.

Rei poured the hot water from the kettle into the teapot with the tea leaves to let them steep for a bit before she reached up into one of the cupboards by the stove and retrieved two small black tea cups. Keiko was standing in the doorway, leaning her head against the wooden frame and watching her girlfriend's agile movements as she went about her tasks.

"Are you really sorry about what you said today?" She ventured.

Rei swiveled around, teacups still in hand. Her eyes widened when she saw Keiko and then went back to normal size as she set the teacups on the counter and moved over towards the pantry.

"I thought you were going to get a head start on Modern Japanese Literature?"

Keiko's tone remained calm as she pushed off from the door and stepped into the kitchen, "You're not answering my question, Rei."

Rei opened the pantry door and reached in, pulling out a small box of cookies they could snack on with their tea. Keiko moved forward and bent down, pulling a small painted plate out of a drawer and setting it on the counter as Rei opened the bag and avoided her eyes. Then with a certain formality, Rei began placing cookies individually on the plate, arranging them into layers of circles one by one.

Keiko growled. She hated being ignored. Without warning, she grabbed Rei's arm and turned her around to face her. Rei sighed, blowing frustrated air through her lips. She couldn't even find peace in her own home.

"What do you want from me, Keiko?" Rei snapped, without meaning to, "I spent basically the rest of the lunch period apologizing to you and by the end of the day you still couldn't look at me without narrowing your eyes. I'm surprised you were even able to see the stairs on the way up here."

Keiko didn't answer her, instead she brought one of her hands behind Rei's neck and brought her down into a kiss. Once Rei responded, the kiss morphed into something less than gentle, but still compassionate as their mouths and tongues became one. By the time they separated for air, Rei had forgotten what they had been arguing about in the first place. They rested their foreheads against one another, basically breathing one another's second hand exhalations. Keiko stared up into Rei's eyes, searching those violet depths for something, anything that would tell her that she and Rei shouldn't be with one another. Anything that would tell her that Rei didn't share her feelings, that she'd maybe made a mistake is choosing a girl who hadn't seemed to even have noticed her before their brief interlude at the drinking fountain when all Keiko could do every day was brood over the stoic miko, but all she saw in those eyes was compassion for her and exhilaration.

Then why wasn't this easier? If it was meant to be, if it was right, then why weren't things easier between them? Why did she and Rei always have to fight like this over such small things that didn't seem to matter? Maybe it was because Keiko didn't trust her yet.

She had issues with trust in relationships, Keiko would be the first to admit to it. Since her last girlfriend, Harumi—then a senior—had cheated on her and left her to die a merciless emotional death, she hadn't trusted many people. Not even some of her friends, whom she suspected had known what had been going on, but hadn't told Keiko what they knew for fear of upsetting her when they hoped that the situation would just work itself out on its own.

She may have let Harumi go because she had been unfaithful to her, but Keiko couldn't be without Rei.

That wasn't a question. No matter how much they quarreled, she needed her like a black market drug. There was just something about the other girl's dark charms that seemed…alluring and otherworldly, so mysterious and enticing that Keiko just couldn't resist them, not even when she tried (and try she had in the beginning way before the miko had ever known she'd existed).

"What?" Rei asked, with a half smile as Keiko continued to stare at her in silence. "Is there something that I can do for you?"

Keiko mentally made up her mind and lunged forward, bringing her mouth back to Rei's and pushing the other girl's back up against the counter. Their lips and tongues merged with a sense of urgency on Keiko's side that Rei had to try to keep up with. Meanwhile, Keiko's hands slid down Rei's shoulders to her breasts, where they stroked and caressed, causing Rei to make small sounds that didn't sound like they'd come from her at all. Keiko smiled into their kiss, and leaned back slightly to meet Rei's flustered eyes.

"I love you, baby." She said, the emotions reflected in her eyes showing that she meant it.

It was the loudest whisper Rei had ever heard pass anyone's lips in this lifetime and it rang in her ears as she lowered her head again and initiated another dizzying kiss. Taking the initiative sparked Rei to take some new ones. She reached around with one hand and pulled Keiko to her by her waist and trailed the other one down her thigh beneath her school uniform skirt, a glimmer of a feeling at the back of her memory reminding Rei that she had done this before with someone else, she just didn't know who.

The kiss got more heated and Keiko released what sounded like a groan as Rei's hand found the hem of her underwear. Then Keiko pulled away from her and Rei stared at her confused, but Keiko just grabbed her arm and yanked her down the hallway and into Rei's bedroom. Damn. Was she glad that grandpa always ran his business errands for the shrine in the afternoon. Rei didn't think she'd ever been so grateful to the old man for anything in her whole life.

Keiko pulled Rei into her own room so fast that she didn't even have the time or the personal freedom to shut the door after them and before Rei could say anything about it, her girlfriend had pushed her back onto her bed.

Rei was sprawled out staring up at the girl standing above her. She didn't think she'd ever seen anything or anyone look so beautiful in her life to date. Keiko was breathtaking in her breathlessness. Her girlfriend leaned down and gave Rei a quick kiss, promising more when she stood back up and until her ponytail and began to undo the buttons on her uniform shirt. Rei watched the movement of her fingers as each button was undone and the material fell away to reveal smooth creamy white skin and the dark burgundy lace of a Keiko's bra.

Keiko noticed the deep blush coloring Rei's cheeks and the heat in her gaze as it roamed over her breasts and smiled deviously, "See something you like from down there?"

She was teasing. Just leaving Rei hanging on her every movement for her own pleasure. The little sadist—a beautiful sadist—Rei corrected in her head. Rei wasn't want to be toyed with though. If she wanted something, she took it.

Rei growled and leaned up wrapping her arms around Keiko and pulling her down onto the bed, quickly reversing their positions so that the other girl was beneath her. Keiko let out a small sound of anticipation as Rei spread her legs so that she could lay between them, then brought her mouth down to cover the thin material of her bra and one of the breasts yet underneath it. Keiko arched into the wet heat of Rei's mouth as Rei's restless hands moved around her back to release the clasp there.

Once the offending article of clothing was out of the way, Rei bent down again and took the other breast fully into her mouth, worshipping it with her tongue.

"Yes, Rei…" Keiko breathed as she placed a hand on the back of Rei's neck, encouraging her, "That's it, baby…"

It was like Keiko's body was on fire and Rei was the flame stoking her entire being into one blissfully twisted inferno.

Rei backed off of the breast she had been favoring and kissed the skin in between Keiko's breast, looking up at her with what Keiko would have described as complete and utter naughtiness had it been anyone else's eyes staring into hers.

"Why are you stopping?" Keiko asked, her breathing still labored.

"I had to look at you." Rei confessed, an endearing hint of awe in her eyes.

"Well, stop it." Keiko huffed, trying not to blush now of all times. "You've got work to do."

Rei couldn't help it, she laughed and buried her face in Keiko's soft skin to muffle the sound as her girlfriend's frustrated sigh sounded from above her.

"Do I?" Rei asked innocently, having recovered herself.

Keiko's eyes widened as she slapped Rei playfully on the arm, "You're being a bitch!"

"Am I?" Rei asked.

Then as if to emphasize the question, she licked a path from between her girlfriend's breasts up to her collarbone where she ended the caress in a sucking kiss. With the utmost dedication, her mouth moved to Keiko's neck where she covered her throat with her mouth and laved at the sensitive skin there with her tongue.

Keiko sighed contentedly, but she wanted more of Rei. She wanted that delicious mouth other places on her body.

Without hesitation, she pushed Rei up by her shoulders. Her girlfriend stared at her confused at the interruption, but Keiko pumped her hips up into Rei's causing the other girl to let out a stifled gasp and lean her head back as she mimicked the gesture with more force. Then there was no stopping Rei. Looking down into Keiko's eyes, she ground herself into the other girl's center, moaning as the Keiko rocked with her. Rei moved slowly, at first, as if feeling out the movement, and then with Keiko's encouragement, they moved faster and easily together as if they were made for the act.

Keiko raised her thighs and squeezed Rei's hips between them, making the space between them just that much smaller as Rei moved with her. It occurred to her, then, even as she was rising on the cusp of excitement herself, that Rei had never done this before and she had no idea how to curb her desire to draw out both of their pleasure. Between the two, Keiko was the more sexually experienced, and she was going to have to make good use of that experience.

Rei moaned into her ear, a pitiful, frustrated sound, as she ground into her harder, searching for her release. Keiko forcefully pulled Rei's head back and kissed her, firmly, determined to slow her eager girlfriend and make this experience the best she could for both of them. Then without warning, Keiko flipped them over, surprising Rei.

Rei stared up at her with a look of confusion and some fear, but Keiko kissed her again to reassure her and began to pull at the buttons on Rei's blouse. Not in a patient mood right now, she ripped at the buttons and pulled the garment completely open, exposing Rei's breasts to her eyes. With the same impatience as she had done away with the shirt, Keiko disposed of the bra and the rest of Rei's clothing before descending on her.

Rei didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to do or even if she should be doing anything about the myriad of sensations and feelings that were running through her as Keiko's mouth devoured her body starting from her breasts and stopping to lave at her belly button. She looked own then, not knowing what to expect, but Keiko certainly knew what she wanted.

Before Rei could ask what she was doing, Keiko's mouth had descended between her legs. The miko jerked beneath her, all coherent thoughts fleeing her mind as she gave herself to this new, wonderful sensation.

Rei was in a box, her conscious, logical, cynical self—the one that was always in charge—had been stuffed into a box and the walls were closing in on it with each and every stroke of her girlfriend's tongue inside her. It was almost as if she were split into two halves: one part of her rising higher and higher, freed from the restrictions of the world as the other half remained grounded, confined to its ever shrinking space.

Rei's eyes were closed shut.

She could feel that part of her continuing to rise while the real her was being suffocated as walls closed in. Her breathing hitched, her lungs froze, and her body stiffened and tightened all over as half of her rose to heaven while the other half of her struggled to breathe.

Keiko rose to lean on her elbows and licked her lips. Then she crawled up beside Rei. Her girlfriend's face had relaxed and she was barely breathing, a sign that Keiko had, indeed, out done herself. When Rei's violet eyes opened though, there was something in them that hadn't been there before and Keiko couldn't tell what it was and that scared her.

"Rei?" She called to her, as Rei stared up at the ceiling and her body began to suck in air again.

It was almost as if she was lost. And Rei felt as if she was trying to come back to herself from some other world. Part of her had struggled, part of her had clung to the walls, refusing to let it go just for pleasure while the other part had surrendered itself to what it had been feeling so easily that the shear speed with which she had given in had surprised her and even frightened her.

"Rei?"

Rei glanced over at Keiko as the other brunette touched her face gently with her fingers.

"Are you okay? You seemed really distant."

Rei continued to breathe. Even though she was back on the ground, her body still felt like it was floating on water and she couldn't force it to move in anyway so long as the feeling consumed her.

Not even to form words.

Rei blinked her eyes and managed a half smile to put the other girl at ease. Knowing that a first time was always a little disorienting, Keiko was resigned not to push Rei because she knew there would be many more times after this for them. Instead, she leaned forward and kissed Rei gently before snuggling into her like she was the only place she ever wanted to be.

A half hour or so later, Keiko extracted herself from Rei's arms. Making sure she was asleep, she leaned over and kissed her girlfriend tenderly on the forehead, then she stood up, got dressed, and discretely left Rei and the shrine behind.

* * *

"Whew!" Minako sighed as she closed her locker door and leaned her forehead against the cool metal.

The end of yet another Friday. Thank Kami for the end of the week. That was all Minako had to say. Too bad though her weekend had to be sullied by the fact that two of her teachers had wanted to hold her after to make sure that she was adjusting to their new curriculums. What did it take for these people to understand that she was new, she was not dumb.

It was then that she caught the side view of a figure coming towards her. A very blurry, unhappy looking brunette figure. Minako wasn't particularly surprised when the figure got close enough for her to recognize her as Keiko Oshida.

Though the girl was making a v-line for her, Minako held her ground and gave the brunette a friendly smile as she stomped to a stop beside her locker door.

Minako had known this was coming. No girl shared her girlfriend with another and didn't have reservations about it or grievances with it…especially if that girl just happened to be Aino Minako with her past history of torrid teenage flings and sticky dressing room affairs.

Being Venus, she was many things, but Minako was not naïve when it came to matters of the heart. She knew it would only be a matter of time before the pot would boil over and she would have to contend with Keiko without her forced politeness and silent loathing.

The storm was here and Minako was finally out in the forefront of it. Well, bring it on then, Minako mused as she took how the other girl looked, I don't care.

The brunette's cheeks were flustered, it looked like she had run here, from where Minako wasn't sure, but taking in the girl's frazzled appearance and the slightly off kilter look of her usually straight brown hair, Minako was betting that it was somewhere with sheets and an equally warm body to warm them with or a floor…or a wall, all of the above would fit the bill.

Minako's outward smile faltered a bit as she let that thought sink in.

A bed, a floor, or a wall where Keiko would be with her Rei, where she couldn't be. Where her Rei would be kissing, holding, caressing, loving, and fucking someone who was _not_ her. It wasn't a very pleasant mental image and it was beginning to make her sick to her stomach the longer she pictured it.

But she couldn't let on that she was bothered by that right now. This girl, this conflict she had known was coming had to be resolved and taken care of before it got out of hand or worse and Rei found out about it.

Before Keiko had caught her breath and could say anything, Minako began to say what she knew the brunette would want to hear.

"I'm not out to steal your girlfriend, Keiko." Minako said, "Rei and I are friends, nothing more."

Once Keiko did catch her breath, she did something that Minako, for all of her intuition, hadn't really expected.

She retaliated.

"Do you know Rochelle Kasunumi?" Keiko began as the blonde's eyes across from her widened and she finished before Minako could even open her mouth to answer the question posed to her, "You should. You were both in a relationship that lasted almost nineteen months and as she tells it, you did steal her."

Minako's eyes closed and she swallowed the dryness in her throat that was making it difficult for her to talk, but still couldn't bring herself to say anything in return. It was true, she knew it was. God, did she ever know.

Had she forgotten who she was already? The details of her life were spread far and wide in headlines and articles across the world. All someone had to do was type in the pass code to their internet connection and there all of her mistakes and triumphs would stand naked on display for anyone and everyone to see. How could she have been so stupid to have thought that circumstances would change for her just because she had been forced to take on the mantle of a normal life?

Minako kept her eyes closed and resigned herself to her emotions; reigning herself in at the last second, but Keiko must have noticed the change in her because when the blonde dared to open her eyes again, the other girl was looking at her with a look edging on regret.

If she'd come across any article on her and Rochelle, then Keiko must have known that it had ended badly and now Keiko was trying to make up for it by feeling guilty, no, by showing that she was feeling guilty over it.

"Just—", The brunette began shakily; a certain desperation in her voice now, "Just don't take Rei away from me. Please. She is the world to me. It doesn't exist without her in it."

Well, who gave her to you anyway?

Minako wanted to ask it, was dying to ask it, to lay everything out on the table for this girl: about her past life, about her and Rei, about how they can't exist in a world and be apart because they are basically opposite parts of the same person…but she didn't. She couldn't. Not because of the limitations of any cosmic law, but because it probably wouldn't do anything for her outside of getting her a one way ticket into one of Tokyo's more prestigious mental hospitals.

Instead, Minako didn't say anything. She just nodded and looked away, determined to maintain some semblance of dignity even as her heart was breaking.

Keiko acted like she had wanted to say something more, but she couldn't get the words out. Instead, she just turned and ran out of the building leaving a nearly empty school and a very conflicted Minako behind her.

* * *

_They had been selfish people back then, living selfish lives in an unselfish time. They didn't deserve to survive what was to come and they hadn't. _

_Mars swallowed, and stared at the corpses that littered the floor of the room they had so courageously defended and for what? None of it mattered anymore. No matter, Rei had seen this moment a thousand times over in her dreams since she'd been twelve and had come to the moon for the first time. She knew what she had to do._

"_Jupiter," Mars called her comrade's attention away from the door they had barricaded that was being stormed by Beryl's troops from the outside, "I need you to help me."_

_They both came from warrior cultures where death by one's own blade rather than surrendering to a stronger enemy was considered an honorable end to an honorable life. The Jovian would understand. She had to._

_Rei stretched out her arm, handing her sword—a sword that her ancestors had forged in the fires of Mars and had carried into battle for hundreds of years against their nation's enemies—to the brunette standing across from her. Jupiter took it, but didn't move to help her right away. Instead, her conditioned sensibilities got in the way of her warrior instincts and she stared at Mars with doubt clearly visible in her green eyes._

"_Are you sure you want to do this, Mars?"_

_Rei seemed to consider what she was about to do for a moment, then she nodded and Jupiter approached her as the Martian removed her armor in preparation for what was about to happen. Standing there in just her red training tunic, the soldier in Rei felt truly vulnerable for the first time in years. Jupiter swallowed and met Mars' eyes as bravely as she could.. _

"_Tell Mina…" Here Rei faltered, the mental image of her lover's red rimmed blue eyes and disappointed frown all too familiar to her, causing a bitter smile to come to her face. "Tell Mina that I died with the truth of my convictions. Tell her that I died just as I lived: with pride."_

_Jupiter nodded and flexed her abdominal muscles while moving to bend her knees so she could brace her body as Mars closed the last few feet that separated them and stood in front of her. Instead of appearing as scared and anxious as she felt, Rei patted Jupiter's cheek, causing an annoyed expression to fall over her friend's features and Rei couldn't help it, she smiled. _

"_Thanks, Jup. It's been fun."_

_If this had been any other day in their lives, Jupiter would have rolled her eyes at Mars patronization of her, but there was too much moisture behind them and now just didn't seem like the time, so she simply nodded as Mars grabbed onto the shoulder straps of her armor. As Rei stood against the point of the short broad sword Jupiter was cradling against her belly, her breathing came out in quick, intense bursts like someone about to jump off of a twenty story building. Jupiter steadied the sword hilt back against her abdomen, the opposite point just inches away from the unprotected mark beneath Rei's ribcage, just below her breasts where the farthest corner of her heart continued to beat, restless and alive. _

_As Rei hesitated and stared down at the blade poised to run her through, Jupiter's hands began to shake and her eyes lost some of their hardness. Rei made a halfhearted attempt to slow her breathing, but it wasn't working. _

"_Ready?" Rei asked, not sure if she still was or not._

"_Ready." Jupiter grunted, every muscle in her body trembling beneath her armor. _

_Rei tightened her grip on the leather straps of Jupiter's armor and pulled. She didn't look down, didn't want to, but she felt the sword tip slide the first few inches through her skin and into her chest. Jupiter tried to help her by pushing forward from her knees. The Martian gasped in pain and stopped the forward movement unable to continue to push herself forward as the steel entered her, inch by inch, but Jupiter knew she couldn't leave her like that. The Jovian grit her teeth and pushed as Mars pulled weakly until the sword was buried to its hilt in her chest and she was all but laying on Jupiter's shoulder. _

_Leaning heavily against Jupiter, Rei's breathing was now coming out in short, pained gasps as it continued to shallow. Green eyes filled with tears as she felt Mars' grip slip from her armor completely as the Martian's last breath tapered out almost like it was something like a sigh and her body began to slowly slid out of the Jovian's embrace. _

_When Rei's body finally hit the floor, Jupiter noticed two things through her blurred vision: one, Rei's face looked almost peaceful in death and two, the senshi of Mars had gratefully closed her eyes to meet it. _

_As Jupiter swatted at the budding moisture in her eyes with one hand, she knelt down to the floor and retrieved the sword slowly from Rei's chest. There was a damp squelching sound as the steel was wretched free and a cistern of blood flowed after the metal as it retreated, breaking into steaming tributaries that ran down the Martian's abdomen and careened off of her bare sides onto the marble floor._

_Jupiter wiped her nose with the leather bracer on her wrist, leaving a trail of red that begun just above her upper lip and stretched halfway across her left cheek as she let out a shuddering breath. _

_The senshi of Mars was no more. _

* * *

Rei shot up in her bed, gasping for breath. She looked around rapidly for a few moments, at first not even recognizing her own room, and then trying very hard to figure out what she was doing laying in her own bed in what appeared to be…the sunlight was shining through her window and it couldn't be morning because she was dressed in her uniform already so it had to be…the late afternoon.

But really, wherever she was, was the least of her worries right now.

Rei reached up and felt her chest, her hand resting just below her left breast, the continual beating of her heart beneath bone and skin somehow making it easier to breathe again. Yes—she inhaled deeply and held the breath in for a couple seconds before releasing it in a burst of fleeing air—she was, indeed, breathing.

That had been the most vivid nightmare Rei had experienced in a long time and she was in no hurry to relive any of the feelings that were still running through her, causing her to sweat and goosebumps to break out all over her skin . Faces and names of people she didn't even know swam around in her head, confusing her even more. She couldn't have imagined them all. Rei could be one to utilize artistic talents, but she didn't usually make things up in her mind. It just wasn't her nature to do that and even if it was, she wouldn't have created a scenario where she took her own life and why? She had no clue. It had to have been a dream, no, a fucking nightmare and she had no wish to relive it anytime soon. All she wanted to do was forget the feelings and the images. Once she did that she could be at peace again.

Rei leaned back against the headboard of her bed and let out a deep breath. Why was she in bed in the middle of the afternoon? She had come home from school, grandpa'd been out, that much she remembered, then she'd made some tea and Keiko had initiated an argument and…oh…yeah, that was why she was in bed. Rei lifted the sheets and looked down at her nearly naked form. Yep, that indeed was why. A slight blush came to Rei's face as she remembered everything they'd done.

But where was Keiko?

Rei stood up and grabbed some clothes from her dresser, determined to shower before grandpa got home and she had to explain why she looked like she'd taken a roll in the hay. The old man would shit a brick when she told him, but she very much doubted that when it came down to the wire, he would do anything more than hug her and say she was growing up so fast…it just wasn't a conversation she ever wanted to have with her grandfather. Ever.

Rei scurried into the shower and by the time she was done, Keiko had ascended the steps to the shrine and was slipping inside the front door, volleying back into her comfort zone and back to her Rei.

* * *

Minako laid her head against the lip of the porcelain basin she was submerged in, watching the steam rise up from the water towards the ceiling lights. A hot bath was such a small consolation after such a long day.

Funny how the events that took place over no longer than a ten minute span of time could make someone want to be a million miles away from themselves, extended, as if they were another person entirely.

The blonde sighed and closed her eyes against the heat rising from the water, letting the sensation carry her away to another place and time.

_She'd heard the clanging of metal against metal and the dull, wet sounds of sharp objects as they plunged through flesh and Venus' heart had begun to beat faster. She was running down one of the many corridors of the Moon Palace, her armor, face, skin, and blonde hair streaked with the blood of her enemies and even some of her own, she was sure. _

_She'd just come from the throne room where she and Mercury had found their princess, hunched over the body of her beloved Earth prince, both of them bloodied and unmoving. But they hadn't had time to weep or even to be angry at how things had turned out for not long after their arrival a band of Beryl's soldiers had barged into the room and attacked them. The two of them had managed to defeat most of the unit, but it had not been enough to save their kingdom nor had it been enough to save Mercury from her wounds. _

_But Venus had survived and since all was now lost, no matter what any of them did, she was making her way to where Jupiter and Mars had secured a last stronghold against the hordes of invading enemy soldiers. There she would fight until her last breath had left her body and darkness would finally come and take her away forever. It didn't matter now. Nothing did anymore. All that she wanted was to die fighting side by side with her stubborn lover. _

_If they had to die in the name of a cause that was dead already, then they would do so together._

_The sounds of fighting and dying faded away as Venus got closer, a sure sign that Jupiter and Mars were still holding off the enemy in one of the Palace's many drawing rooms, but they would not be able to do so forever. No…their princess was dead, the queen had disappeared along with Pluto to the gods only knew where, and the Outers had yet to arrive from their far away posts to defend what was left of the falling kingdom. The world as they had known it was ending and they along with it were set to vanish into oblivion. _

_It was only a matter of time. _

_A final cry came from the room as Venus neared it and she recognized it as Jupiter's strong voice. Speeding up, the Venusian ran as fast as her feet would carry her over the short distance to the room. However, when she reached the doors, she saw what she had not been expecting. _

_The floor was littered with black armored corpses. Kneeling by one of the bookcases was Jupiter, breathing heavily as she leaned against the wood and cradled a gaping hole in one side of her armor. But what literally stopped Venus' heart in her chest was the sight of Mars laying as though in a deep sleep, her armor perfectly arranged and her arms laying at her sides in a relaxed manner on top of a stretching pool of blood. _

_Venus didn't bother to hold back the tears as they formed and flowed freely down her cheeks. She was thinking, only moving as she scrambled across the room towards Mars' body. _

"_Rei? Rei!" _

_Venus raced her hands over her lover's armor and could find no hole, no vital mark in it where a death blow could have been served and yet blood was still rolling in waves out of her cold form. Then she spotted it, the blade resting at Rei's side. Venus recognized the sword to be her lover's, the steel of it still wet with Mars' blood. Suicide was it. But why? _

"_She wanted me to tell you…that-t…she died with p-pride." Jupiter rasped out the words, as a wave of pain slammed through her weakening body. _

_Venus wanted to scream. She wanted to beat her fists into her lover's chest until her heart began to beat again, but no matter how many times she violently shook Rei's form or pushed on her or called her name, she could not bring her back. Minako had dropped to her knees and was now sitting on top of Rei, her arms wrapped around her dormant shoulders, her face buried in the Martian's neck as she sobbed unintelligibly, unable to form words. _

_Jupiter sat, her breathing still labored, her ailing body still slouched back against the bookcase, and watched. Venus tried to speak, but her words were interrupted by hitches as her body fought its way back from emotional desolation. _

"_Wha—ahha—what hap-pened?"_

"_She wanted to die with honor. It was the only thing that still seemed worth defending to her now that this entire place has gone to hell." _

_There was a silence—an eerie thing in a room filled with so many dead—into which they simply existed, and played no parts. Minako didn't say anything. _

_Finally, Jupiter continued:_

"_I redressed her in her armor so that she may not be so vulnerable to the hordes of the damned once they overtake us. I know that would be what she'd want. Will you not fight?"_

_Venus didn't answer, just buried her head deeper into Mars' pale neck._

_Jupiter gasped in pain, as she clutched at her bleeding side. _

"_Coward…" The Jovian spat out weakly, watching Venus as she hunched over Mars' body through silted eyes. "She died as much for you as she did to escape them." _

_Venus wouldn't deny it. She was a coward, a selfish coward who would do anything to be a million miles away from where they now were, in hiding with the woman whose corpse she now clung to in her arms. She would rather live. She would rather live a lifetime of peace and watch this whole blasted kingdom burn to the ground than fight for it ever again. _

_The badly splintered doors that Jupiter had once again barricaded gave a frightful lurch as more soldiers tried to break through them from the other side. The Jovian stood, hunched over from her wound. _

"_Brace yourself." Jupiter whispered with the last of her strength, "They're coming."_

_Venus didn't move. She didn't even care. All she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and forget everything, to try to think of this as just a bad nightmare and nothing more, but she couldn't. Instead, she just clung to Mars stiffening form and waited as the wood holding Beryl's army back began to crack more and more with each bombardment. _

_Swiftly, the end would come and she was ready for it. Back then, back in the days before they had to fight for their lives, before everything had been broken, they really had had it all. _

* * *

Minako sprang out of the water, gasping for air. At some point she'd slid down into the bath tub and not even come out of her memory. She sputtered and wiped the excess water out of her eyes as her breathing began to even out.

"Mina?"

Minako looked over to where Artemis was standing halfway through the crack in the door, looking up at her, concerned.

"It's nothing, Artemis." Minako said, wiping her eyes again. "I just—remembered something, that's all."

"You were underwater." Artemis said, hopping up on the basin beside her.

Despite the seriousness in her mentor's voice, a smirk curled its way onto Minako's features.

"What were you going to do, jump in after me?"

"I was considering it, yes, but then you came up for air and I had to remind myself not to give into the urge to strangle you. Just what do you think you were doing?"

"Doing a little deep sea exploring." Minako quipped, splashing water at him as he sprang back from her. "You want to join me, it's great fun."

Artemis coughed into his paw, "No, thank you."

There was nothing but steam and a comfortable silence between them until Artemis, as concerned as ever about Minako's well being, said what needed to be.

"Why were you really under the water, Minako?"

"I just slipped." She said, narrowing her eyes at him. "My life may suck, but I have no plans to end it myself anytime soon. Even I know better than that."

Artemis nodded, relieved. "What did you remember? Something new?"

Minako bit her lip as the image of a prone armored form and pools of blood on a marble floor flashed back into her mind. "Yes, it was new."

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked, laying a paw on her shoulder.

"No." Minako replied, shutting her eyes and leaning back against the porcelain again. "That would just make it more real."

* * *

"Love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many many endings, and many many beginnings—all in the same relationship."

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes-

_**Author's Note: **_Hey all. Hope everyone liked the chapter. And if there is any doubt, I promise things will get better for Rei/Minako. Things are a little tough right now, but there are always a few rough spots to hobble over before our beloved main characters can stumble into each other's arms and make mad/passionate love on a bed, chair, couch, floor or wall somewhere. ;] Whether you loved or hated this chapter, let me know by giving me some feed back so I can continue to make this story the best that I possibly can for you guys. Ciao and thanks for reading. :]


	8. Armageddon of the Brain

_**Chapter Eight: Armageddon of the Brain**_

Three of the four commanding shitennou where gathered at a scrap metal dump on the very outskirts of the city of Tokyo, watching and waiting.

"Have you seen his teeth and hair? It's like he's lost what was left of his mind." Nephrite offhandedly commented as he kicked a piece of scrap metal over the precipice and into the pit of recycled metals beside him.

"Maybe he has." Zoisite volunteered with a little smile.

"No one asked you!" Nephrite growled.

"Jadeite seems to have given into the primal side of his instincts, that is all." Kunzite said, staring off towards the city where the man they had no reservations insulting had been sent to do a distinct job that they were going to make sure he completed. "Which is not a bad thing because now we can unleash him and know that he'll cause considerable damage to the weaklings who live here, even if he doesn't accomplish exactly what he is supposed to."

"I think it's sexy." Zoisite announced, giving Kunzite's backside a sidelong glance. "He's got the whole half beast, half man-in-the-night complex that the people of this planet seem to be so fascinated by. It's a wonder he's not in some back alleyway defiling the nearest would-be young virgin."

"You would find such a repugnant way of living attractive." Nephrite groused at his fellow shitennou. "The way he treats himself is degrading to all of us. Even the queen is disgusted by it, she just hasn't said so in front of us."

"Either way, it doesn't matter." Kunzite turned around, settling the issue over Jadeite with one look at the other two, "We're just here to make sure he follows through with his orders and if he does not—"

"We gut him." Nephrite finished with a note of pride.

"Gut him for not gutting them. My, what a merry little trinity we all are." Zoisite mused out loud as Kunzite narrowed his eyes at the city lights and Nephrite kicked another piece of mutilated metal into the pit.

* * *

Inside the city, Jadeite prowled the streets, his grey uniform jacket slung over one shoulder leaving him only in his trousers, boots, and a black sleeveless shirt.

His tall and sinewy form scattered long drawn out shadows beneath the streetlights as he moved. It was well after 3 am. There was still some traffic in the streets, but very few people were out walking them at this hour and the few who saw the shitennou didn't give him a second glance as they were used to seeing strange characters in their early morning treks.

His previously blonde hair was a darker shade, sandy almost, the edges of it shorter and sharper kept than it had been in his other life and, though it only showed when he was smiling, he'd filed down two of his front teeth to sharpen them so he would look as dangerous and he felt. His fellow shitennou mocked him openly for the changes he had made to his appearance and disposition over the years, but he was a changed man in this life. He had been reborn into darkness like they all had been and he would take on whatever shape he damn well pleased. So long as he did what was expected of him, not even the queen gave a shit what he did to himself.

Blue eyes scanned the night like the hungry gaze of a jungle cat searching for its prey. And a very specific prey it was for him too.

Jadeite stopped in the shadow of a building and pulled a small crystal from the pocket of his trousers. Holding it out in front of him, he let it go and watched as it hovered in mid air in front of his face.

"Show me." He commanded.

The thing shook lightly, then spun around in a clockwise circle for a few seconds. Finally, it settled levelly on its side, pointing its glowing point in the direction he needed to head. Closing his eyes, he sniffed the air as the crystal vanished into its usual subspace pocket, searching for one scent above the usual smells of pollution and daily life in the city. Catching a whiff of the specific essence he had been searching for, Jadeite leapt up onto a lamppost and from there he scaled the roof of a building in preparation of crossing the city by rooftop.

* * *

"Nothing should take this long." Nephrite grumbled, coming to stand beside Kunzite as the man stared like a statue into the city depths, seeing more than he would ever tell them. "He has over stepped his bounds."

"It's been an hour." Zoisite volunteered from where he was sitting on a stack of wheel hubs overlooking the pit, his legs crossed, his arms folded nonchalantly in his lap. "And I'm bored. I say we blow this place and go in there, do what he was supposed to do a long time ago, and then fry his repulsive carcass on our way out."

"I never thought I would say this, but I agree with Zoisite." Nephrite said, getting the words out quickly as though they would leave a bad taste in his mouth if he didn't. "The more time he wastes in that city, the more it will reflect back upon us to Beryl. You know it's true, Kunzite."

Kunzite let out a frustrated burst of air between his lips. His brutally honest companion did have a point. If Jadeite did not deliver on his promise to find and do away with all of the senshi before they could awaken, then Beryl would punish them all, and more specifically: him. Finally, Kunzite nodded his consent and Zoisite leapt up from his sitting position and stretched his arms over his head.

"Finally!" He snipped, settling his hands on his hips.

Nephrite took a deep breath and pulled two sheathed swords from a subspace pocket, glaring at Zoisite as he strapped them both around his shoulders. "Could you possibly be anymore annoying?"

Zoisite chose not the dignify that with a verbal response, just turned his nose up and spun on his heel as a green motorcycle materialized itself in the dirt driveway out of thin air. Then the green eyed general turned around, a sultry smirk settled onto his features as he twirled a set of keys around one finger.

"Are you coming or not?

Nephrite whispered a curse under his breath, but followed the younger blonde as he made his way towards his bike. Zoisite straddled the machine and walked it off of it's kickstand before starting the engine. Nephrite got on behind him, preparing to risk falling off rather than holding on to the blonde ahead of him.

"Ready, gruffy?"

"Let's just go. The sooner we get this over with and kick his ass, the sooner we can get off of this godsforsaken planet and back into our own beds."

Zoisite didn't need anymore encouragement as he revved the engine and off then went towards Tokyo and the not yet awakened senshi of Mars.

* * *

Jadeite landed in a tree, pausing on a high branch and raising the crystal again to see how much farther he had to go to get where he should have been half an hour ago. There was a patch of about twenty or so trees to his right and then he should be there. Wasting no more time, he bounded from branch to branch, tree to tree, swinging from arm to arm until he finally landed in a crouch at the base of a very long line of stone steps.

So this was Hikawa Shrine. It had to be. This was his destination.

To save energy, Jadeite remained in a crouch and vaulted up the stone steps on all fours and finally landing in a crouch again at the top of the massive hill.

Letting out a deep breath and cracking his neck in a swift motion, he stood up and began on foot towards the building.

One end he knew from his scans of the place was the main part of the shrine where prayers and offerings were made. Another part, the internal part, was where patrons could come and have their fortunes told in the flames, and then behind all of that was the house. The family home of the elderly priest who maintained the shrine and his teenage granddaughter, whom Jadeite had so hoped to meet in person tonight.

It was a moonless night with only the stars to light up the night sky, making the blonde man's journey across the grounds just that much easier. There was a brisk easterly wind that blew the leaves on the trees and ruffled his short hair as he walked, but he paid no heed to the chill. He'd spent years submerged in the universe's darkest abyss. The coldest day on Earth was a cake walk compared to that.

When he got close to one side of the house, Jadeite stopped, turning his head and listening. Even through the sounds of the city he heard it, the screeching of wheels, and felt the looming presence as his fellow shitennou made their way ever closer him. He snorted.

How dare they presume just because he was late that he couldn't complete the simplest of tasks given to him. Had he not earned his position among their ranks by killing anyone who challenged him or stood in his way? Had he not proven his bloodthirstiness? Had he not proven himself as one of the queen's most terrifying and ruthless warriors? They really should have trusted him more. All the same, he didn't need them and he expected that by the time Zoisite and Nephrite crossed the city and reached this place they would be sorely disappointed to find the senshi of Mars already dead and this place razed to the ground along with her body.

A predatory grin came over his face as Jadeite sauntered the few remaining feet toward the house, pulling a jeweled dagger out of his belt as he continued to move forward.

* * *

"You're an imbecile!" Nephrite shouted as he dismounted the bike, angry that he'd even gotten on that moving junk heap in the first place.

"How was I supposed to know that it would break down!" Zoisite defended himself as he kicked the hopelessly smoking vehicle so hard that it toppled over onto its side in a pathetic mass in its last throes of life.

Nephrite ran a gloved hand along the down side of his throat as he looked up at the stars in the night sky, most of them barely visible because of the street lights surrounding them, while his other hand rested on the belt around his waist. Two swords hung from shoulder straps down his sides and rested against either hip, ready to be drawn at a moment's notice.

His eyes narrowed as they settled upon a single star, brightly piercing through the haze of artificial light and he smiled.

_Do you think it's worth it now, Soja? _Nephrite thought, _For your sake, it better be. _

Zoisite stared at the brunette's profile in the still silence that hung between them, appraising the other man's slightly-too-stiff posture which showed off the muscles in his shoulders and chest.

"Hey, fellas," A voice came from a side alley behind the building they had parked in back of. "You need a hand with that bike?"

"No." Nephrite growled, raising his hand to deter the man still hidden in the shadows, "And if you know what's good for you, you'll mind your own business and go back to wherever it is you came from."

"You got it all wrong, man." Another voice said, a boy no older than his early twenties emerging from the darkness wearing a leather jacket and wholly jeans while cleaning his fingernails with an sharpened key. "We didn't ask if you needed help, but we will take that bike off of your hands for you."

Nephrite could see enough in the dimness to know that there was a fairly large group of men and boys behind the two who had spoken and he grimaced. This was all they needed, just another distraction to get in their way.

The owner of the first voice emerged from the gloom of the alleyway. He was a man who couldn't have been older than his mid twenties wearing a bandana and a cut off vest. With his thumb, he mimicked a cutting gesture across his throat while his other hand held a Glock handgun.

"Look, you give us the bike and no one will get hurt, alright?"

Zoisite looked down at the smoking junk heap that used to be the bike he'd stolen from one of the busier shopping districts of Tokyo and wondered why anyone would want it in this condition. I mean, there was smoke—literally _black_ _smoke_—spiraling up from the engine as they spoke. It was obviously not worth the effort these guys were putting into trying to steal it and certainly not worth any effort on their parts to defend it, but Nephrite seemed to have other ideas on the matter.

The brunette looked from the bike to the men—probably coming to the same mental conclusions Zoisite himself had—and then he narrowed his eyes at the men across from him.

"No, you look, you pitiful human," He snarled, turning a fraction of an inch towards the group of men and resting one of his white gloved hands on a sword hilt. "If you don't get out of here within the next five seconds, I am going to shred you all into little bits so small that you won't even amount to a hill of dust on the pavement!"

"Hey! Watch who you are calling pitiful you renaissance fair reject…or something." One of the younger males in the group shouted as the others laughed.

Nephrite visibly stiffened.

Zoisite snickered.

Were all humans as blind and dumb as these ones? Clearly, the two of them were dressed in some sort of military uniform, even though no one on Earth would be able to recognize it. Clearly, they were both fit, fighting men and clearly, Nephrite was armed with two swords that he could use to hack them all to pieces guns or no.

Nephrite shrugged off his grey uniform jacket leaving him only in his black undershirt and threw the garment of clothing back to Zoisite, who caught it with one hand above his head.

"Stay back, they're all mine." The brunette snarled at him.

Zoisite huffed, "As if I'd get any enjoyment at all out of disposing of this rabble."

Turning his full attention back to the group of men, Nephrite locked eyes with the man with the gun pointed directly at him and unsheathed both of his blades slowly.

"Hey buddy! What do you think you're doing? I didn't tell you, you could move—"

But Nephrite already had. In a blur he rushed forward and sliced through the other man in one swift movement, the freeing segments of the body taking a few moments to separate. Nephrite landed behind them before they even hit the ground in dripping mounds of flesh. The group of men was looking at him differently now. Many of them had wide eyes and gaping mouths. Some of the younger men who'd obviously never seen this sort of killing before, had wet themselves. The second man who had spoken to him fell backwards onto the concrete, his face splattered with his leader's blood. They were all scared stiff. He might not have to kill them after all—but in all likelihood he still would because some fun had to come out of this night.

Nephrite frowned as a middle aged man in the group raised a hand gun and fired it at him. His whole left side recoiled as the bullet entered his chest. Nephrite looked down at the hole in his shirt that was just beginning to ooze green blood, grimacing as tremors of pain ran through him at the new injury. These pitiable human weapons might not be powerful enough to do him any real harm, but getting hit by one still hurt like hell.

Encouraged by his own sudden bravery, the middle aged man fired again and Nephrite was forced to take a step back as another bullet made its home in the center of his chest, where—had he been a full blooded human—his heart would have been.

Nephrite took a deep breath as the first hole in his chest began to close up and the other one began the rapid healing process. "Nice try, old man, but I'm afraid it's just not good enough. All of you, hear this before I send you all to your graves: I WILL NEVER DIE!"

A few of the men at the back of the group tried to make a mad dash for life, but Nephrite hunted them first. He plowed through the group, dazing most of them. He caught up with two of the younger men attempting to flee the scene before they'd even gotten two feet away and decapitated one while he grabbed the collar of the other one and threw him against the brick side of the building, splitting his head open. Two more met very similar fates as they attempted to run passed him just as Nephrite was wheeling on the group of remaining men.

Well, that was two less than he still had to kill. It would rain blood before he was through with them all.

Some of the men and boys just crouched and cried like struck sheep as they were hacked to ribbons. Others made to at least put up a fight even though they couldn't win. They were the ones Nephrite killed quickly, to be more merciful on those who would defend themselves. It was a fighting soul's quick consolation.

The last man standing took the brunt of all of Nephrite's unused energy as he had his stomach sliced, his collarbone broken, and his head severed from his body. Zoisite yawned and watched as that last head rolled a few feet towards him and then stopped, ghostly eyes staring blankly up at him and an expression of horror frozen onto the dead face.

"Well, that wasn't melodramatic at all, now was it?" Zoisite quipped, as Nephrite used the tail of his shirt to wipe the blood off of his swords before returning each one of them to their individual sheaths.

Nephrite ignored the witticism at his expense, and walked over to Zoisite to collect his jacket. The younger blonde threw it at him, but not without first giving the other man's sleek muscled physique an approving once over (Zoisite may have been in a relationship already, but he sure as hell wasn't going to pretend he was blind because of it).

"Well, what now?" He asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"We will have to find another mode of transportation to get us back to the junkyard. Then we can teleport safely from there with or without Jadeite."

"What's the matter, not in as much of an ass frying mood as you were earlier?"

"We've wasted too much time here already. Let's just leave. Kunzite will summon him if he doesn't return and if he does decide to dissert us, then I will return and kill him myself."

Nephrite turned around and Zoisite could see the coldness in his eyes, coldness that said he meant to keep his word if the time ever came. The younger man shuddered and looked out towards the street and the still smoking motorcycle that had brought them there.

"We're still stranded." Zoisite sulked, "I say we teleport from inside the city. It doesn't matter anymore if we're seen. What are these backward little primates going to do to us anyway? Throw sticks at us and run away?"

For once, Zoisite had a point.

Nephrite shrugged and without another word, the two of them disappeared into a burning spiral of dark energy.

* * *

Night on Earth was a different sort of animal than it was anywhere else in the universe and though Jadeite had a job to do, he was also trying to savor certain aspects of the Eartharian night for what it was. As he crept soundlessly along the patio deck that surrounded the entire shrine complex, he took in the sounds of the crickets as they chirped under the wood. His ears also picked up on the delicate symphony being performed both above and below ground, as insects, drawn out by the darkness in him, crawled and slithered through the topsoil.

The air was still, colder, than it should've been and Jadeite could see his breath. The weather in the place was obviously reacting to their presence in the city and pretty soon the inhabitants would figure out that things were not all as they should be. He'd been sent to do this quietly, without being discovered, and so he would do, but on his own terms.

He crept up to a patio door, looking in. It was an empty dining room. Not the room he wanted. Growling, he moved towards the next patio door. It led into a sitting room. Not that one either. He crept up to the last patio door on that side of the house, feeling it in his bones, that this was the one.

The pane glass looked into a dark bedroom. His fingers flexed around the jeweled hilt of the dagger in his hand as his other hand came up to the handle of the door. It slid open quietly and he slipped in through the small opening he'd made.

In the twin bed pushed up against the wall across from him, his intended target lay asleep. Jadeite moved as quickly as he dared, sauntering with a catlike precision. When he reached the bed he knelt down, until he could feel the heat radiating from the body warm body beside him.

The covers shifted as the girl moved in her sleep to expose one naked shoulder and the splash of disheveled ebony hair hiding a swash of pale skin from view.

Jadeite smiled.

He reached out and ran his fingertips along Rei's neck, drawing back the dark strands of hair and exposing the fragile pulse that calmly pumped beneath lavender scented skin.

The blonde man felt an insistent tingle at the back of his mind. Someone was trying to get his attention, but he wasn't having any of it. He would do what he had been ordered to do, no question, but he was going to have a little fun first.

Shutting down his thoughts and giving in to his instincts, Jadeite lowered himself until his mouth was mere inches from that delicious neck. He allowed his hot breath to trickle onto the skin he was favoring, soft skin, that he yearned to taste—

SMACK!

Jadeite landed on his side on the floor, his cheek throbbing from an attack of unknown origin. He regained his footing and noticed that the skin he had been favoring was now covered up and the dark haired girl was awake and fixing him with a look fit to kill. Jadeite straightened and adjusted the grip on one of his knives. She must have seen the glint of silver because when she moved it was on the other side of the bed. He wouldn't let her get very far though.

The wiry blonde leapt over on all fours and easily cut off the girl's escape route to the door. She opened her mouth presumably to scream, but Jadeite slapped her hard across the face, stopping her. Rei's face was burning and her ears were ringing, but beneath it all she could hear a guttural growl from someplace above her. She was going to die. She knew it.

Rei opened her eyes, tears of pain obscuring the dark figure above her into a vertical blob. Jadeite moved forward and landed a swift kick to Rei's stomach. Then again. And Again until the girl was gasping for air. He could have simply pointed a finger at her and nuked her with a bolt of dark energy where she lay, but it would have been too easy and not nearly as fun as doing things the old fashioned way. Bending over, he griped her throat and lifted Rei up. She could feel the pressure of the fingers on her neck, making it even more difficult to breathe. The tears she had been trying to hold back were slowly seeping through her lashes. Had she been more herself at the moment, she would have been ashamed at her weakness in front of a stranger, even one who was causing her so much pain, but she just couldn't help it. She was going to die, she knew it.

Jadeite chuckled, his eyes glinting sinisterly, "I'm going to enjoy this. You little shit eater. Tell your queen when you see her in the afterlife that Beryl sends her regards."

"What—gah—what are you t—talking about?" Rei wheezed.

She had no idea what was going on. Why had this madman come after her? She hadn't done anything. She was a teenager—a high schooler—what could he possibly want with her? Fuck it, why her out of all of the other girls in the city?

Jadeite just raised his other hand. From her place being held prostrate on the floor, Rei could just make out the glint of metal in his hand. Rei closed her eyes, she knew what was coming, but she couldn't bring herself to watch. What she didn't expect was the outraged yell that followed or the bone crushing feel of fingers as they lost their grip on her throat or the sound of breaking of glass.

Hino Rei opened her eyes to find herself alone in her room and the patio door leading to the courtyard outside shattered. What the hell? What was going on? First, this blonde pervert sneaks into her room intent on having his way with her, then tries to kill her, then she's suddenly out of danger and all in the span of fifteen minutes? Rei coughed and scrambled to her knees.

Outside, Jadeite rolled over and sprang into a squat. One of his blades lay across the wide expanse of ground in front of him. He sniffed the air and a deep growl came from his throat.

He was not alone.

The end of a gold chain shot out of the trees and-as it had done before—wrapped itself around one of his arms. He immediately sprang back onto his feet, but the chain was still latched to him and when a not so subtle yank pulled him forward, he nearly lost his balance again.

Growling, he decided to reverse the tables. When the chain was yanked toward him, a beautiful creature with blonde hair rolled out of the trees and onto the ground in front of him. Jadeite cocked his head for a moment as he studied her. This…this…human she had to be one of the five they were looking for. She just had to be. The uniform, the ability to use special powers more than anyone of this puny race could ever dream: he had stumbled himself upon a reawakened sailor senshi.

Jadeite grinned.

He had been sent to snuff out the dark one before she could reawaken, but when he eventually came back having killed two for the price of one, he could only imagine how his queen would reward him. Jadeite yanked on the chain still in his hands again and the girl let go as she got to her feet.

"Who are you?" Venus asked, standing her ground.

"It's insignificant for you to know that information as you won't live long enough to make good use of it." He said.

Jadeite swung the chain of hearts around and then lashed forward with it. Venus dodged the hit and the end of the chain harmlessly slashed the ground. Jadeite grinned.

"You up for a little sport, blondie?"

Venus didn't answer, not that Jadeite intended to give her any time to. He lunged forward with the chain again and again, Venus dodged it without trouble. Then Jadeite struck a third time and again, Venus dodged, but this time when she dropped and rolled, she landed just inches away from where Jadeite had leapt forward. She tried to roll away again, but he grabbed her by her hair and pulled her back to his front, holding her there. He leaned close to her and Venus could feel the heat of his breath abrasively blowing onto her skin.

"If this is any indication of what the rest of your senshi friends are capable of, don't expect to get very far. Our queen will make minced meat out of your charred corpses and serve it as a feast to the rest of her army. Better just to stand back and let what will be, be, don't you think? "

Jadeite had the air knocked out of him as an elbow connected squarely with his gut. Then a hand slammed into the side of his face and he found himself laid out on his back in the grass. Venus turned on him, her blue eyes cold as steel.

"You can tell your queen to go fuck herself!" She seethed, feeling all of the anger and frustration she'd been feeling for the past few days settle itself on this one man.

Jadeite slank back onto his hunches and growled. He wasn't the man he'd been centuries before, but a hybrid of that man and the beast his exile in the darkest part of the universe had created. He was no more human than the monsters he bred for Beryl and it was this girl's mistake that she couldn't see that. It _would_ be her undoing. He sprang to the side and landed on all fours not too far from where one of his knives had fallen. His fingers took the blade up in his hand as if it were a finger he had lost and was reattaching. It belonged to him in the same way that a blind man's eyes belonged to him: Jadeite didn't need to see or feel it to know it was there.

Venus watched him in a blur of movement as he regained first one of his weapons and then the other as he rolled to a squat not far from the shrine. She needed to act fast, before he could.

"Venus Love—"

The words were pushed from her lips in a rough gust of air as she was lifted off of her feet and thrown backwards by the shoulder slamming into her midsection. This time it was Venus who landed hard on the ground. She tried to roll away from her attacker, but the hilt of one of Jadeite's knives split her cheek and she was too dazed by the pain to move. A part of her brain was screaming at her, yelling: _Get up! Move!_ But like it did on a good lazy morning, Minako's body refused to budge an inch from where it lay. Jadeite reached out with one of his hands and held her face , with the other he moved his knife closer.

"This has been fun, but I don't have time for any more games."

He hunched over her and pressed the steel into the skin of her throat. Venus' breath came back to her in short, painful gasps and she looked up at him through half shut eyes. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be in this time period—maybe they were always destined to lose…

Jadeite moved the blade slowly, drawing a thin line of blood from the light skin there in preparation for the deep plunge. There was a sound from somewhere in the distance just then and Minako watched as her attacker's eyes widened and his knife stilled against her neck. Then it came again a whooshing of air and then a thump. This time Jadeite shrunk away from her and yowled loudly. She watched wide eyed as he gritted his teeth and disappeared in a wisp of dark smoke.

Minako sat up slowly and looked around herself, half expecting the feral man to pop up someplace else, but he didn't. He was gone. Minako looked back towards the shrine and saw who'd scared off her attacker. It was Rei. Leaning against one of the supporting beams to the outside porch, she was still in her pajamas, a dark bruise on the side of her beautiful face and a bow clutched tightly in one hand.

* * *

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

-Norman Cousins-

(1915 – 1990)

_**Author's Note:**_ And the writer's humble conclusion at the end of this chapter is that, yes, she has seen way too many Hollywood action movies…So, I've redone the characters of the shitennou and changed at least one of them significantly from how he was shown in the manga and anime versions of the series and I am a little worried as to how all of you will feel about that…but I hope the sailor moon fans out there reading this story at least won't mind that much if I make some small, temporary changes to suit the characters in my alternate universe. ;]

Well, give me feedback. Tell me what you liked and didn't like so I can keep making this story as good as it can be for all of you! :]


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